alt Hacker NewsFlorida ranks in the middle of U.S. states for homicides and does substantially better than the median for suicides.
The reputation of Florida comes from having a very broad public records law that requires publication of numerous details of police reports that in other states is kept confidential. That means that sensational stories are much more likely to make it into the news: https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/facsch_lawrev/2117/
That is most interesting. It's the same principle to why people consider Wikipedia to be unreliable. Letting people see the issues in one place creates a perception that they don't exist in places where you can't see them.