Q&A – Comparing Florida’s Crime Rate to New York’s
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Social: @brianmuddradio
iHeartRadio: Use the Talkback feature – the microphone button on our station page in the iHeart app.
Today’s entry: Submitted via talkback: Yesterday or the day before we had a guy arrested by Palm Beach Sheriff's office. He was in the international airport and they found him with a bunch of rounds of ammo and guns. They interviewed a passenger coming out. And he said, I can't believe I left the safety of New York City and wound up in the madness of Florida. Could you address that person's comments, please?
Bottom Line: That comment, by the returning New Yorker, wasn’t lost on us either. Joel specifically included highlighted that clip in his coverage of the story because of what appeared to be the delusional world the man was living in. But as always there are two sides to stories and one side to facts so let’s boil down the facts of the situation to see whether the comments are as offbase as many of us perceived them to be.
To compare the crime rates between Florida and New York based on the data from CrimeGrade.org, I'll analyze the provided information from the sources for each state, focusing on overall, violent, and property crime rates, as well as other relevant metrics like cost of crime and safety rankings. The data is primarily for 2025 projections, reported per 1,000 residents unless otherwise specified, and reflects CrimeGrade.org's methodology, which uses FBI crime data, machine learning, and statistical analysis for granular projections.
Let’s start with comparing crime between the two states. Here’s what that looks like.
Summary: Florida vs New York
Florida
- Violent Crime Grade: A−
- Property Crime Grade: A
- Other Crime Grade: A+
- Overall Crime Grade: A+
- Cost of crime per household (2025 estimate): $647
New York
- Violent Crime Grade: C
- Property Crime Grade: B−
- Other Crime Grade: A+
- Overall Crime Grade: A−
- Cost of crime per household (2025 estimate): $892
Overall New York has higher violent crime rates, property crime rates and overall crime rates while posting similar “other crime” rates to Florida. Aside from being more likely to be victimized by crime in New York, the hard cost of crime for the average household is 38% higher annually as well. This looks like a slam dunk. Then, to get particularly specific in comparing Florida to New York City – here's what that looks like...
New York City has substantially higher crime rates compared to Florida:
- Violent crime in NYC is more than 2× higher than Florida’s statewide rate
- Property crime in NYC is about 1.5× higher than the Florida average
Clearly there's no comparison here. Generally speaking you’re meaningfully less likely to be victimized by crime in Florida than New York and you’re exponentially safer being in Florida as compared to New York City generally. So yes, the traveler who made that comment is living in their own invented reality.