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This week’s criticism of President Trump’s power play in Washington, D.C., was swift and fierce because it was so clear: The violent crime rate in the District of Columbia fell to its lowest level in the twenty-first century last year. Trump cannot legitimately use crime statistics to defend his deployment of federal agents and National Guard troops or his takeover of the district’s Metropolitan Police Department.
Nevertheless, he did it because he was able to. D.C. only has home rule to the extent that the US government allows it because it is a federal district that is not a part of any state. In addition to being untrue, Trump’s allusions to gangs of ruthless criminals prowling the streets of Washington, D.C., were superfluous.
Trump also mentioned Oakland, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Baltimore as places that do not have Washington’s unique status, saying he would think about deploying soldiers there. The outcome of this week’s trial on Trump’s use of National Guard troops in Los Angeles earlier this summer will determine whether he is able to do that. A decision is anticipated soon.
According to FBI statistics, only Baltimore, out of the places Trump mentioned, is in the top 10 in the country for violent crime, but some studies also include Oakland. The fact that all four of Trump’s designated cities are located in so-called blue states that have voted against him in three presidential elections, however, is most likely more than a coincidence.
Perhaps because they are in states that backed him in 2024, Trump failed to name the American cities most afflicted by violent crime, including murder, save from Baltimore: St. Louis, Memphis, and Tennessee. Kansas City, Missouri. Cleveland. Detroit. Little Rock, Arkansas. Milwaukee. New Orleans. Birmingham, Alabama.
Trump is known for lying about urban crime and exploiting it to further his political agenda. Using imagery from the violent 1980s and 1990s, he dug deep into the American psyche throughout his 2016 campaign. With a peak in 1991 and a subsequent historic decline that persists to this day despite sporadic upswings, the worst crime of that age had long since passed.
Trump, however, exploited old worries of crime to victory and pretended during his first inaugural address that the country was still stuck in a time of American bloodshed. Therefore, it is true that Trump is a master at spreading lies about crimes and igniting repressed anxieties of crime in order to gain more authority.
He’s not alone, though.
Democrats, Republicans, police, prosecutors, prison guards, and pretty much anyone else running for public office or supporting (or opposing) a ballot measure that could reallocate public spending toward or away from law enforcement all freely employ the tactic of inciting fear of crime for political ends.
News organizations are playing the game. Stock footage of thieves rifling store shelves is frequently used on programs that wouldn’t typically cover anything as uninteresting as a committee hearing on a measure to prolong criminal penalties. An ordinarily uninteresting narrative is transformed into a fear-based special report by the frequent repetitions.
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In order to maintain the frightened clicks, newspapers occasionally run true crime articles that rerun ancient murder stories from long ago.
Chains of failing pharmacies attribute their bad performance on fictitious or exaggerated shoplifting surges. Lawmakers adopt tough-on-crime measures, prosecutors threaten lengthier punishments, and mayors and police chiefs feel pressured to respond by deploying more officers—even if stealing hasn’t actually increased or if it turns out that poor business decisions are the real cause of the chain’s failures.
Democrats staged a number of retail theft hearings last year and the year before, and they supported a package of tougher-on-crime bills that were more focused on attracting a large turnout in congressional elections than on actually reducing crime rates in California, where post-lockdown crime fluctuated in different cities but did not amount to a sustained statewide uptick.Proposition 36, which turns recurring minor property crimes into felonies, was approved by voters, undermining past reforms.
Property crime does exist and can have detrimental effects. Despite not even coming close to being in the same league as high-crime cities like Memphis or Little Rock, violent crime is nonetheless a persistent issue in Oakland and practically every other California city.
Trump is playing fast and loose with the facts, as are those who claim that there is no crime or that the crime that does exist is not significant. Calling crime a fiction of the imagination or an emergency of historic proportions has more prestige than referring to it as one of the many significant urban challenges. It doesn’t justify hiring more police officers or funding the police.
Trump mentioned a number of additional myths that are generally accepted in many jurisdictions in his comments about Washington, D.C.
For instance, on bail. On the grounds that someone murders someone and is released without posting cash bail before the end of the day, Trump promised to somehow overturn Illinois’ successful no-money-bail statute. The naive comment reiterates California’s misleading stereotypes on non-cash bail. In actuality, convicted murderers are rarely freed prior to trial, and when they are, it’s usually because they had the funds to do so. Pretrial release decisions in no-cash-bail regimes are based on a defendant’s risk to the community rather than their wealth or poverty.
Crime rates have not changed as a result of the Illinois statute.Although those accused of violent and other major crimes in Los Angeles can frequently still bail out if they have money, the Los Angeles County Superior Court’s policy of banning money bail between arrest and arraignment for those accused of lesser offenses hasn’t worked either.
However, notwithstanding the statistics, skeptics continue to claim that no-cash-bail increases crime. Trump is well aware that numbers rarely win out in a battle between fear and numbers. When figures don’t support his arguments, he says they’re manipulated and fires the individuals who conducted the calculations, as he just did with the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Or, to use arbitrary figures, as he did when he asserted that his plan to lower medicine prices would result in a 1,500% cost reduction, meaning that Americans will receive cash everytime their prescriptions are filled rather than having to pay for their medications.
Or, as he is doing with D.C.’s declining crime rate, to simply ignore them.
Trump does it with more swagger and bravado than anybody else. However, a lot of people do it. Americans should be wary and suspicious of assertions made by any of their elected or law enforcement officials, not just their president, if they do not want their criminal justice budgets and policies to be influenced by dishonesty.
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