Trump's fake crime wave
On January 19, during a rally held in Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump claimed that “crime has gone through the roof” and that it “was up like 40%.” He claimed that violent crime is especially bad in American cities. “We will rebuild our once great cities, including our capital in Washington, D.C., making them safe, clean, and beautiful again. And we want to make this city again safe. We don’t want people coming to Washington and getting mugged, shot, killed. We’re going to stop it,” Trump told the crowd.
On January 21, when asked at the White House about pardoning violent January 6 insurrectionists, Trump responded that he “won this election in a landslide because the American public is tired of people like you that are just one-sided, horrible people in terms of crime.” (Trump did not win the election in a landslide. His margin of victory in the popular vote “is the smallest of any president who secured a popular-vote win since” former President Richard Nixon.)
Trump has used the purported crime wave to justify his crackdown on undocumented immigrants. In his inaugural address, Trump stated that he would be invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to “eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to U.S. soil including our cities and inner cities.” Trump pledged, “We are going to bring law and order back to our cities.”
But there’s a problem with Trump’s claim that violent crime is skyrocketing in American cities: it is not true.
In reality, many American cities saw violent crime drop below pre-pandemic levels in 2024, according to a new study by the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ). In some cities, homicide rates are nearing historic lows.
The facts about crime in America
According to the report, an analysis of crime trends in 40 cities across America found that “[h]omicide and most other violent crimes have dropped below levels seen before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic” that occurred during Trump’s first term.
The report compared data from 2024 to 2019 and found that most cities are experiencing less violent crime now than in 2019. For example, in 2024, the study found 6% fewer homicides than in 2019 in cities with available data.
The cities with the largest homicide declines include Baltimore (-40%) and St. Louis (-33%.) Homicide rates in Baltimore, Detroit, and St. Louis have now “receded to the levels of 2014, when national homicide rates were at historic lows.”
In Detroit and St. Louis, the decline in crime since 2020, the last full year when Trump was in office, is even more dramatic. St. Louis had less than half the number of homicides last year than in 2020.
The study also found that other violent crimes, including sexual assault, domestic violence, and robbery, were lower in 2024 compared to 2019. The study did find some small increases in aggravated assaults (4%), gun assaults (5%), and a moderate increase in carjackings (25%) in 2024 compared to 2019. But the CCJ data shows that the rates of these crimes were lower in 2024 than in 2020, Trump's last full year in office.
Out of the 13 crimes that the CCJ report looked at, the only crime that increased in 2024 compared to 2023 was shoplifting, which increased 14 percent. However, the data shows that shoplifting was only 1% higher in 2024 than in 2019 in 25 cities with available data.
Contrary to Trump’s claims about rampant crime in Washington, D.C., in 2024, total violent crime in the capital city was “the lowest it has been in over 30 years,” and “down 35% from 2023,” according to a press release by the United States Attorney’s Office.
The sharp decline in violent crime in D.C. in 2023 was part of a national trend, according to the CCJ report. In 2024, 22 cities experienced a drop in homicide cases compared to 2023, with only six cities experiencing increases. Overall, homicides fell 16 percent in 2024 compared to the year before, which equates to “631 fewer murders in the 29 cities providing data for that crime.”
“If that decrease holds once a larger number of jurisdictions report 2024 data to the FBI later this year, it would rank among the biggest single-year homicide drops since at least 1960,” the report notes.
The CCJ report is in line with other reported data about violent crime rates. The Real-Time Crime Index, a data tool created by crime data analyst Jeff Asher’s AH Datalytics, which aggregates “current crime data from hundreds of law enforcement agencies nationwide,” shows that overall violent crime, murders, and robberies went down in January through November 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.
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Trump is the crime wave.
This is wonderful reporting and analysis. The general population of media consumers does not read stuff like this. WHY ? The answer is multifaceted and will fill studies and reports and books. Personally I am beginning to wonder if human beings have evolved very much at all. You don’t need to have a high IQ to care about the real problems and to try to understand and encourage real attempts at solutions. But you do need to care.