by Amanda Hernández, Kansas Reflector
President Donald Trump has argued that he needs to deploy National Guard troops across state lines to protect federal personnel and property or to support overwhelmed local law enforcement in cities he claims are “overrun” by crime.
But a Stateline analysis of U.S. Census Bureau and federal crime data shows that Trump’s deployments and proposals have not focused on the nation’s most violent cities. Of the 10 cities population 250,000 or more with the highest violent crime rates, Trump has sent National Guard troops to just one: Memphis, Tennessee.
He has proposed action in just three other top-10 cities: Oakland, California; Baltimore; and St. Louis. All, along with Memphis, are Democratic-led cities.
cities.
In recent months, Trump has pledged strong federal intervention in several cities if, he claims, local officials fail to restore order.
Critics, including Democratic governors and mayors, have challenged his rationale in court, arguing that deployments exceed the president’s authority and undermine local control.
Federal courts have issued orders halting troop deployments in several cities while legal challenges proceed. Most recently, deployments were blocked in Chicago and Portland. The Trump administration is appealing those rulings.
Trump also has suggested deploying troops to New York City and San Francisco.
Stateline’s data analysis shows violent crime has fallen sharply across the United States, including significant drops in some cities that Trump is threatening with military action.
Some crime experts question whether a heightened law enforcement or military presence in major cities will have a lasting impact on crime.
“In the long term, this can’t really be good for public safety,” said Nancy La Vigne, a criminal justice researcher and dean of the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University. La Vigne added that crime may decline in the cities where the Guard is deployed, but that it will likely be an “artificial suppression of crime” because potential victims may avoid downtown areas — an effect that could fade over time.
Violent crime is down
Some Republican governors have welcomed federal support. Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee endorsed the use of Guard troops in Memphis as part of a new citywide anti-crime task force.
Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry has requested federal funding to activate up to 1,000 Guard members statewide, citing “elevated violent crime rates” in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Shreveport. Landry also pointed to critical staffing shortages in local law enforcement.
According to local police data through Sept. 6 of this year, however, violent crime in New Orleans is not elevated. It has fallen 16%, with homicides down 20% and property crimes also down 20% compared with the same period in 2024.
Likewise in Baton Rouge, both the overall violent crime rate and the homicide rate declined between 2023 and 2024, falling below 2019 levels, according to a Stateline analysis.
In Shreveport, the overall violent crime rate increased between 2023 and 2024, while the homicide rate fell. Both rates remain higher than in 2019.
Several other cities with high violent crime rates — including Milwaukee; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Minneapolis — also are led by Democrats but have not been targeted. Two other Democratic-led cities with high violent crime rates, Cleveland and Kansas City, Missouri, are in states with Republican governors and likewise haven’t been targeted.
The cities with populations of 250,000 or more with the highest violent crime rates were, in order: Memphis, Oakland, Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, Kansas City, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Albuquerque and Minneapolis, according to Stateline’s analysis of FBI data.
Available national crime data shows that both violent and property crime continue to decline nationwide. These broad national trends, however, don’t mean every community is experiencing less crime. Some cities and neighborhoods are still seeing higher rates of certain offenses.
According to the Real-Time Crime Index — a free tool that collects crime data from more than 500 law enforcement agencies — violent crime nationwide was 10.7% lower between January and July 2025 than during the same period the previous year, with homicides down 20% and property crime down 12.4%.
The nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice’s most recent crime trends report shows declines in homicides, gun assaults and carjackings across 42 major cities in the first half of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024. The report shows increases in homicide across five cities.
Although the FBI’s findings are a year behind, they align with those numbers. The FBI’s 2024 report, released earlier this year, showed that violent crime fell 4.5% and property crime dropped 8.1% nationally compared with the previous year. Homicides alone declined by nearly 15%.
These improvements mark a continued reversal of the pandemic-era surge in violence, when homicides rose nearly 30% in 2020 — one of the largest single-year increases in U.S. history.
But the pace and direction of those declines vary widely from city to city, and public perception of crime often diverges from what the data shows.
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