Springfield, Ohio Has Been Covering Up Race of Murderers, Records Show

FBI Confirms the City Has Been Lying About the Agency's Crime Reporting Guidelines

The Springfield, Ohio, Police Department has been covering up the race of murderers, falsely claiming the FBI does not track race of offenders. And the city has failed to report accurate homicide data to the FBI for years, based on Springfield and FBI records and emails.

After the recent controversy over crime in Springfield, I decided to check the data for myself. So under public records laws, I asked the city for reports on murders in the city over the past ten years, including race and ethnicity of offenders. I also looked up the city’s figures on the FBI’s crime data website.

I was surprised to see that neither identified the race of nearly all murderers.

City officials confirmed for me that this is not accidental. Bizarrely, they even went so far as to falsely insist that the FBI itself does not track race of offenders.

When I asked Springfield spokesperson Karen Graves, also the town’s diversity and inclusion officer, why Springfield police don’t track race of murderers,  she claimed, “It is my understanding that the FBI tracks the following categories: Hispanic, Non-Hispanic and Unknown.”

The Springfield Police Department’s record department also made the same astonishing claim when I asked it why it wasn’t reporting race of offenders. “We do not track by race. Per the guidelines of FBI and NIBRS… ” the records officer added. “These are the nationalities that the FBI and NIBRS track.  The only options are Hispanic, Non-Hispanic, Unknown.”

FBI spokesperson Nicole Porter Steward confirmed that the Springfield officials’ claims were not true. “Per the NIBRS User Manual, valid data values for race are White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, or Unknown. The data values for ethnicity are Hispanic or Latino, Not Hispanic or Latino, or Unknown,” she said.

Moreover, the FBI spokesperson confirmed that Springfield’s failure to report race violates FBI’s rules for reporting crime data. “According to the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, gender and race are mandatory data elements for victims, offenders, and arrestees,” Steward said.

When I pointed out to town officials that they were wrong about the FBI’s policies, they didn’t back down but continued to insist the FBI doesn’t track such figures. Spokesperson Graves said she would check further with the police department but never got back to me.

The FBI’s crime data website also shows the city has underreported the number of homicides over the past five years, listing only 29 murders not 34. And zero murders for the past couple of years.

FBI spokesperson Stewart confirmed, “If the FBI receives the information, we publish it.”

To understand how bizarre Springfield’s claim is, all major police departments in the U.S. report race to the FBI, including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles—as well as Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati in Ohio.

To do my own analysis of the race of murderers in Springfield, I made a public records request for the mug shuts and arrest reports for everyone arrested for murder in recent years. Springfield officials haven’t responded to my request in more than a month, and I notified the city yesterday that I will be suing to obtain the records if it doesn’t turn them over pronto.

Why would Springfield lie and try to cover up race of homicide offenders?

A closer look at the data gives a clue about why.

While Springfield claims the FBI does not track race of homicide offenders, the city does report race of homicide victims. It shows that 22 of the 29 reported victims were black (76%). Nationally about 90% of black people are killed by people of their own race. (The figures for same-race homicides white people is closer to 80-85%.)

So we can assume even without Springfield’s releasing the data that most of the homicides in town are committed by black people.

It’s part of the left-wing effort to downplay certain kinds of crime by race, as I discuss in my new book, “Special Victim Status, The Era of Woke Journalism.” However, it’s not just journalists that sanitize crime statistics for black people, left-wing politicians and social activists also do it.

Clark County, which contains Springfield, is 81% white and 6.5% black, according to the 2020 census. There were 108,819 white residents and 8,797 black residents. Springfield itself is 17.4% black and 72.8% white. There were 42,670 white residents and 10,210 black residents.

The percentage of black residents has certainly dramatically increased since Haitian immigrants began arriving in large numbers in 2020 but updated Census Bureau figures haven’t been released yet. The figures should start showing up by the end of the year.

Even though Springfield claims the FBI doesn’t track race of offenders, the city did report race for other kinds of violent crime. The FBI figures show that over the past five years more than 31% of the violent crime in Springfield was committed by black people, although black people were 17.4% of the population in 2020. White resident committed 28.3% of the crime despite being 72.8% of the population. The city also claimed the race of 21.2% of offenders was unknown and it indicated the race of 28.4% was not specified (perhaps also part of its effort to hide race of offenders).

This appears to be the truth that the diversity and inclusion staff in Springfield would rather you not know.

Springfield has a high murder rate—twice the national average. There have been 81 murders over the past ten years in this town of 60,000 people. You would ordinarily expect half that number for a city that size over a decade.

The national murder rate over the past ten years is 5.6 per 100,000 and it has risen to 6.1 per 100,000 in the past five years. The murder rate is more than 12 per 100,000 in Springfield. The town regularly makes the list for top 5 or 10 most violent cities in Ohio.

This was true even before large numbers of Haitian immigrants began arriving in 2020. The County Health Commissioner Chris Cook said at a city commission meeting in July 2024 that 10,0000 to 12,000 Haitian immigrants have settled in Springfield with most coming since 2020.

Lindsey Bohrer, a spokesperson for the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicle, said that, “In 2023, there were 1,300 Haitian immigrants in Clark County with driver’s licenses (DLs) and 2,088 with identification cards (IDs).  As of Sept. (20204), there are 2,353 Haitian immigrants with DLs and 4,613 with IDs. *These are current, valid, credentials held by Haitian immigrants in Clark County.*”

The actual number of immigrants would be higher, since young people and old people may not be eligible for driver’s licenses.

Tom Betti, a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Service commented, “Proof of legal status is required for participation in food and cash assistance programs. As such, we are able to provide, as you asked, the number of Haitians receiving food or cash assistance in Clark County. As of October 1, 2024, ODJFS can report that 4,324 Haitian refugees in Clark County received food or cash assistance during the month of August 2024 and 4,123 during the month of September.

Betti added, “The numbers reflect individual applicants” not total family members.

The City of Springfield lost population since the 2010 census, with thousands of whites and blacks leaving. The Haitian immigrants have offset and apparently reversed that trend.  The U.S. State Department states 95% of Haitians are of African descent. The University of Maryland and other sources state that most Haitians are not Hispanic.

Springfield averaged 8.5 murders per year from 2014 to 2019 but the number dipped slightly to 7.5 murders per year from 2020 to 2024, when Haitians began arriving. Both rates are still twice the national average. Again, the entire 10-year average was 8.1 murders per year—also twice the national average. These numbers do not reflect other kinds of crime, such as assaults or robberies.

Springfield officials claim that Haitians haven’t added to the cities crime problem, but city officials have lied and covered up other aspects of crime in the city—and they still haven’t released mug shots or arrest reports for homicides for recent years under my public records request, which would give more details about who is committing crime in the city.

Regardless, Springfield continues to have a high crime rate, especially for Ohio, whose overall violent crime rates are below the national average.