Local officials slam president’s remarks and point to federal funding cuts as the real harm to public safety in their cities
Local officials slam president’s remarks and point to federal funding cuts as the real harm to public safety in their cities
When Donald Trump announced a federal takeover of the Metropolitan police department in Washington DC on Monday, he left room for the possibility of making a similar move in other cities across the US, alluding to their high crime rates.
“You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities that are very bad,” Trump said. “We’re not going to let it happen, we’re not going to lose our cities.”
But both experts and elected officials have been quick to counter Trump’s claims, pointing out how major cities are in fact experiencing dramatic decreases in violent crime rates since they peaked during the pandemic.
“Every category of crime and every population group that the FBI covers is reporting a drop pretty much nationwide,” said Jeff Asher, an analyst who studies criminal justice data, adding that there was no disparity in the trend between red and blue cities or states.
The downward trend has been consistent nationally since around 2022, as the country began to recover from the pandemic, experts said.
“It’s clear that a lot of what we saw during the Covid-19 era has been reversed,” said Ames Grawert, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice who researches crime trends.
While it’s impossible to isolate the exact causes of the spike in crime during the pandemic, several experts point to the collapse of social services as one cause. Since then, state and federal agencies poured money into communities for projects like gun violence prevention programs as well as more streetlights on local roads.
These programs are the same ones being slashed as the Trump administration has prioritized shrinking federal spending.
