Candidate for Governor and Chairman of the Board of Supervisors in Prince William county, Corey Stewart, claimed in a tweet this weekend that he had cut the crime rate in half in his county.
According to the Washington Post this is not factual. In 2016 the number of murders in Prince William County more than doubled. In 2015 there were 10 murders in the county in 2015 and 22 in 2016. Compare that to Fairfax county, which is three times the size of Prince William, there were 18 murders last year.
Prince William County has an interesting way to tally violent crime, from The Daily Caller:
The county government used a reporting technique that only reports the most violent crime committed during a string of offenses. For example, if someone was arrested for murder, robbery, and grand theft auto, the murder would be the only statistic recorded. The state government uses an updated system that lists each offense as a separate crime. That number reveals that violent crime went down, but only 22 percent, according to a politifact report at the time. The report also mentioned the fact that the 22 percent number was the lowest of any surrounding county, indicating that other counties had a much higher reduction in violent crime than Prince William County did in the same time frame.
