Trump Suggests More Us Cities Need National Guard But Crime Stats Tell

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 31, 2025, 10:59 AM

trump suggests more us cities need national guard but crime stats tell

President Donald Trump has threatened to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, New York, Seattle, Baltimore, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, to fight what he says is runaway crime. Yet data shows most violent crime in those places and around the country has declined in recent years. Homicides through the first six months of 2025 were down significantly compared to the same period in 2024, continuing a post-pandemic trend across the U.S. Trump, who has already taken federal control of police in Washington, D.C., has maligned the six Democratic-run cities that all are in states that opposed him in 2024. But he hasn't threatened sending in the Guard to any major cities in Republican-leaning states. John Roman, a data expert who directs the Center on Public Safety & Justice at the University of Chicago, acknowledged violence in some urban neighborhoods has persisted for generations.

But he said there's no U.S. city where there “is really a crisis.” “We’re at a remarkable moment in crime in the United States,” he said. President Donald Trump has threatened to dispatch the National Guard to Chicago and other big cities. But data shows most U.S. violent crime has been in a steady decline in recent years (AP video: Mike Householder)

Members of the Louisiana National Guard patrol at Union Station, Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) National Guard troops patrol the grounds of the Washington Monument with the Capitol seen in the distance as part of President Donald Trump’s order to impose federal law enforcement in the nation’s capital, in... 28, 2025. (AP Photo/J.

Scott Applewhite) Members of the West Virginia National Guard near the Washington Monument in Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib) President Donald Trump has threatened to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, New York, Seattle, Baltimore, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, to fight what he says is runaway crime. Yet data shows most violent crime in those places and around the country has declined in recent years.

President Trump has threatened to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, New York, Seattle, Baltimore, San Francisco and Portland, Ore., to fight what he says is runaway crime. Yet data show most violent crime in those places and around the country has declined in recent years. Homicides through the first six months of 2025 were down significantly compared with the same period in 2024, continuing a post-pandemic trend across the U.S. Trump, who has already taken federal control of police in Washington, D.C., has maligned the six Democratic-run cities that all are in states that opposed him in 2024. But he hasn’t threatened sending in the Guard to any major cities in Republican-leaning states. John Roman, a data expert who directs the Center on Public Safety & Justice at the University of Chicago, acknowledged violence in some urban neighborhoods has persisted for generations.

But he said there’s no U.S. city where there “is really a crisis.” “We’re at a remarkable moment in crime in the United States,” he said. By ED WHITE and CHRISTOPHER L. KELLER, Associated Press President Donald Trump has threatened to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, New York, Seattle, Baltimore, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, to fight what he says is runaway crime.

Yet data shows most violent crime in those places and around the country has declined in recent years. Homicides through the first six months of 2025 were down significantly compared to the same period in 2024, continuing a post-pandemic trend across the U.S. Trump, who has already taken federal control of police in Washington, D.C., has maligned the six Democratic-run cities that all are in states that opposed him in 2024. But he hasn’t threatened sending in the Guard to any major cities in Republican-leaning states. John Roman, a data expert who directs the Center on Public Safety & Justice at the University of Chicago, acknowledged violence in some urban neighborhoods has persisted for generations. But he said there’s no U.S.

city where there “is really a crisis.” President Donald Trump has threatened to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, New York, Seattle, Baltimore, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, to fight what he says is runaway crime. Yet data shows most violent crime in those places and around the country has declined in recent years. Homicides through the first six months of 2025 were down significantly compared to the same period in 2024, continuing a post-pandemic trend across the U.S. Trump, who has already taken federal control of police in Washington, D.C., has maligned the six Democratic-run cities that all are in states that opposed him in 2024. But he hasn't threatened sending in the Guard to any major cities in Republican-leaning states.

John Roman, a data expert who directs the Center on Public Safety & Justice at the University of Chicago, acknowledged violence in some urban neighborhoods has persisted for generations. But he said there's no U.S. city where there “is really a crisis.” “We’re at a remarkable moment in crime in the United States,” he said. President Donald Trump has threatened to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, New York, Seattle, Baltimore, San Francisco and Portland, to fight what he says is runaway crime. Yet data shows most violent crime in those places and around the country has declined in recent years.

Homicides through the first six months of 2025 were down significantly compared to the same period in 2024, continuing a post-pandemic trend across the U.S. Trump, who has already taken federal control of police in Washington, D.C., has maligned the six Democratic-run cities that all are in states that opposed him in 2024. But he hasn’t threatened sending in the Guard to any major cities in Republican-leaning states. John Roman, a data expert who directs the Center on Public Safety & Justice at the University of Chicago, acknowledged violence in some urban neighborhoods has persisted for generations. But he said there’s no U.S. city where there “is really a crisis.”

“We’re at a remarkable moment in crime in the United States,” he said. We look at the use of the National Guard by President Trump — as well as the Democratic governor of New Mexico — in cities with higher-than-average crime. How effective can we say the Guard have been? One of the major stories of 2025 was President Trump's repeated attempts to send National Guard troops into cities run by Democrats. In peacetime, the National Guard is usually called in by governors to help with things like natural disasters. But this year, Trump sent in troops in several places across the country, sometimes over governors' objections.

The president claimed the purpose was to deter violence and crime. NPR's law enforcement correspondent Martin Kaste followed this phenomenon this year and joins us now, Hi, Martin. DETROW: Can you remind us how this use of the National Guard started? KASTE: Yeah, well, you'll remember in June in Los Angeles there were those huge protests against the administration's stepping up of immigration enforcement and raids. President Trump federalized the guard there, overriding the Democratic governor who said they weren't necessary, and the guard ended up sort of lined up outside the immigration court building downtown. And that seems to have launched this idea for the administration.

In the next few weeks, we saw deployment orders for Washington, D.C., Memphis and the Chicago area. And in those cases, he said that they were being sent in to fight crime. So overall, he's been giving the guard these two tasks this year - protect immigration enforcement and deter crime. DETROW: How effective have guardsmen and women been on those two missions? The National Guard presence in Washington hasn’t put a dent in violent crime in the nation’s capital. At least, that’s the reality for the families of local murder victims, who claim that the Trump administration is ignoring their plight in order to push a narrative that crime has been practically eradicated...

There were at least 128 murders in the nation’s capital over the course of 2025, according to data from the Metropolitan Police Department. One of those murders involved 17-year-old Tristan Johnson, who was shot and killed in November over what his family believed was the attempted theft of his favorite jacket. Just two weeks later, Donald Trump completely bypassed Johnson’s death to tell the nation that the city hadn’t “had a murder in six months.” The boy’s mother, Juanita Sampler, told The New York Times that bold-faced lies about crime in the city were “heartbreaking.” "Declaring a Crime Emergency in the District of Columbia" is an executive order issued by U.S. president Donald Trump in August 2025.[2][3][4][5]

On August 11, 2025, Trump switched control of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPDC) from the city government of Washington, D.C., to the federal government, invoking section 740 of the... Under a separate presidential memorandum and subsequent executive order,[6][7] Trump also deployed federal law enforcement agencies, the District of Columbia National Guard, and the National Guards of multiple states in response to what he... However, a Washington, D.C., police commissioner was placed on leave for allegedly falsifying crime data in mid-May, and the city police union has claimed that underreporting of crime is a systemic problem.[8] The order federalizing control of the MPDC expired on September 10,[9] but the Secretary of the Army initially extended the National Guard deployment to November 30 and the Secretary of Defense subsequently extended the... The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPD) is normally under control of the city government. Section 1–207.40 of the D.C.

Home Rule Act, entitled "Emergency Control of Police" requires the mayor of D.C. to provide to the president "such services of the Metropolitan Police force as the President may deem necessary and appropriate" whenever the president determines that "special conditions of an emergency nature exist which require... The President is required to notify the leaders of the Committee on the District of Columbia of the Senate and the House of Representatives in writing within 48 hours. The law requires Congress to approve the action within 30 days if it is in session, or after coming into session; otherwise, the services end.[17] On August 4, 2025, Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old former DOGE employee also known as "Big Balls", was assaulted by two 15-year-old boys, according to MPD, which arrived and apprehended the two suspects.[18] However, city...

Trump Suggests More Us Cities Need National Guard But Crime Stats Tell

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