Tea Party Republic Senator Ted Cruz from Texas, in an attempt to mock Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, bashed The Bronx as a dangerous place when he said, according to Business Insider, “Now, I understand that Manhattan is very concerned with their security with the Bronx, but it’s a little bit different on 2,000 miles of the Rio Grande.” Senator Cruz said these remarks during a meeting of the conservative Americans For Prosperity’s Defending The American Dream Summit in Dallas, Texas. Guess he doesn’t know his own state and that The Bronx is safer than its 3 largest cities.

Here’s a little lesson for you, Senator Cruz, courtesy of a little digging Welcome2TheBronx did:

The following is data compiled by the FBI via their Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics utilizing the latest dataset as well as data from the NYPD for The Bronx:

Crime Rate of The Bronx vs Dallas and Houston

As you can see from the data Dallas, which was the location of the meeting where Senator Ted Cruz made his disparaging remarks about The Bronx, has a much higher murder rate and almost double the incidents of rape. In the robbery and assault categories, The Bronx and Dallas are roughly on par with The Bronx slightly higher in those categories. Houston’s crime rate is also significantly higher across all major violent crime categories.

Crime has continued to drop in all the above cities but The Bronx is still ahead of the game with a murder rate of 5.9 and 16.7 rapes per 100,000 population according to NYPD stats for 2013. Also now that crime stats from Riker’s Island will no longer be counted with The Bronx, you can expect the numbers to drop even more drastically for our borough.

Furthermore, the popular data site, Neighborhoodscout.com (used by such sites as The Huffington Post, The New York Times, CNN, Wall Street Journal) lists the Bronx as safer than Dallas and Houston. In fact. NeighborhoodScout gives The Bronx a rating of 22 out of 100 (100 being the safest) with Dallas receiving 3 out of 100, Houston 5 out of 100, and San Antonio got a 3 out of 100 making our borough over 7 times safer than Dallas and San Antonio and over 5 times safer than Houston — all 3 which are the largest cities in Texas with a population of over 1 million.

Oh and here’s another little interesting tid-bit: Manhattan received the same rating of 22 out of 100 from NeighborhoodScout as The Bronx. And according to an article by the Huffington Post last year, Brooklyn was actually the bloodiest borough far ahead of The Bronx (interesting how media spins and age old stereotypes continue to portray The Bronx as the worst of all).

So Senator Cruz, hope you learned something: Think before you speak. You try and disparage our home and we will come for you with irrefutable evidence of how wrong you are.

Here’s what our local elected officials had to say about Ted’s fear-mongering:

Pathetic how so called “leaders” peddle lies & fear mongering to make point. #Bronx is a gem & on rise Ted. #getagrip http://t.co/VUXiypnoTX — Melissa MarkViverito (@MMViverito) August 30, 2014

.@tedcruz clearly has no idea what the #Bronx is really about! Let him know how outdated/disgusting his ideas are! http://t.co/JBwDjC7oYP — Ruben Diaz Jr. (@rubendiazjr) August 31, 2014

Ignorant remarks by Ted Cruz tonight about the #Bronx. NYC is one city, no room for those remarks here. cc: @MMViverito @rubendiazjr — Scott M. Stringer (@scottmstringer) August 31, 2014











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