From the Washington Post:

Trump is right about violent crime: It’s on the rise in major cities.

By Sean Kennedy and Parker Abt August 5 at 7:09 PM

Sean Kennedy is a visiting fellow at the Maryland Public Policy Institute, a conservative think tank. Parker Abt is a student at the University of Pennsylvania.

Last month, the conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch convened their political network to discuss a path forward. Top on the list was criminal-justice reform — a passion the Kochs share with President Obama.

Obama and the Kochs insist that crime is actually at all-time lows.

Mark Holden, the Koch brothers’ political adviser, is convinced the evidence backs up his argument, saying: “I don’t think the data shows that [crime is rising]. I think it shows the opposite. I think you’ll see the data shows some spikes in some cities on some issues, but I think we’re much safer, and that’s what the data shows.”

Obama echoed the sentiment in his Democratic National Convention speech last month, when he said, “The crime rate [is] as low as [it’s] been in decades.” …

There’s one problem, however. Most of those who reject Trump’s crime claims don’t cite any data beyond 2014, the last year of fully available FBI statistics. To any claims that crime has risen since then, they respond that there are only “upticks” in a few cities. …

Furthermore, data collected by the Major Cities Chiefs Association indicate that this trend has continued into 2016. In the first half of the year, homicides are up 15 percent over 2015. …

However, while the rise in homicide rates is not uniform, in aggregate murder is up 21 percent in the major cities we surveyed, comparing the first half of 2014 to the first half of 2016.