Fox News contributor Lisa Marie Boothe mocked and belittled a network guest on Friday for asserting that the crime rates in New York are similar to Florida, declaring that she lives in Miami and “we don’t have these problems there.”
Despite Boothe’s confident boasting, however, Florida’s murder rate is actually much higher than New York’s—and the same goes for Miami compared to New York City. Additionally, the violent crime rates of the two cities are similar, while both have seen an increase in murders and aggravated assaults.
With Fox News spending much of the past year-plus portraying Democratic-run cities—most especially NYC—as dystopian criminal hellscapes, the network welcomed former New York State Sen. David Carlucci on Friday afternoon to debate Boothe on the topic. In this instance, the conversation revolved around a New York City sucker-punch suspect being released without bail.
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Carlucci began by noting that while crime has been on the rise in urban areas, it has also increased nationwide—including in GOP-led rural America.
“This is a problem for the left and the right. The reality is that crime is up around the country,” Carlucci told Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher. “New York City is still one of the safest big cities on the face of the planet. The crime rate is relative to what we see reported in the media.”
He added: “There is crime that has been up, but it is relative to what they saw when we escaped the recession of the late 2000s. The homicide rate in New York is nothing compared to what it was in the 1980s and 1990s. It was five times higher. We could point to guns. That’s what is killing people around this country, and Republicans still refuse to do nothing about it.”
After Gallagher said “you can make the arguments but people aren’t believing it,” he added the anecdotal evidence that he’s seen people openly shoplift from drugstores three times in the past year and nobody tried to stop them. The news host then bellowed that “Republicans did not call for ‘defund the police’” before turning to Boothe.
The right-wing pundit launched into a Fox News-typical tirade about how crime is only happening in “liberal cities run by liberal mayors and [with] George Soros prosecutors who want criminals out of jail” before telling Carlucci that it is his “reality that’s creating the problem.” Telling Carlucci to “spare me your sanctimonious garbage,” she then noted that increased crime is the reason she’s become a “first-time gun owner” and moved from New York to Florida.
“The crime rate in Florida is just as bad, if not worse, than New York,” the ex-lawmaker shot back, only for Boothe to immediately interrupt.
“That’s not true,” she confidently claimed. “I live in Miami. We don’t have these problems there, my friend.”
Carlucci further defended criminal-justice reform in New York City, calling it a “work in progress” as Boothe dramatically exclaimed “oh my goodness” before ridiculing the Fox News guest.
“Is this guy for real?” Boothe snarked as Gallagher flatly replied: “Yep.”
Regardless of Boothe’s defiant protestations, the facts are clear that Miami’s crime rates are on par or worse than New York City’s—despite how right-wing media has breathlessly portrayed the safety of the Big Apple.
According to the FBI’s 2020 Uniform Crime Report, the homicide rate in Florida was 5.9 murders per 100,000 people and the violent crime rate was 384 per 100,000. New York, meanwhile, had a murder rate of 4.2 and a violent crime rate of 364 in the same time frame.
For New York City, the homicide rate in 2020 was 5.6 per 100,000 people, slightly below the national average of 6.5. Miami, however, experienced a 12.8 homicide rate per 100,000 in 2020—more than twice that of NYC. Miami’s violent crime rate of 556 in 2020, though, was a bit lower than New York City’s 584.
As for the increase in crime rates, Politifact found earlier this year that New York did see a larger jump in murders than both Texas and Florida—both states that have been touted by conservatives as “tough on crime.”
But at the same time, Texas and Florida experienced double-digit increases in murders in 2020, and their homicide rates were still much higher than New York’s. Miami, for its part, saw a jump of 42 percent in murders, compared to NYC’s 47 percent in 2020. In the meantime, the overall increase in aggravated assaults in New York was far less than that of the other two states.
Boothe would later defend her claims, taking to Twitter to claim that “there are no safe neighborhoods in NYC anymore” and that “random people don’t get sucker punched in downtown Miami by convicted sex offenders who liberal prosecutors let out like they do in NYC.”
