Several of the cities where President Trump is threatening to deploy the military are seeing increases in police recruitment numbers — hirings that have largely correlated to falling though still persistent crime rates across America.
Overall homicides are down 17 percent this year nationwide while violent crime is down 10 percent and property crime is down 12 percent over the previous year. Still, pockets of high crime continue to dot the landscape with St. Louis, Missouri, topping the list, and the president’s chief targets, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, ranking in the top 10.
Earlier this month, Mr. Trump activated National Guard soldiers and federalized Washington, D.C.’s police force, which he is entitled to do for up to 30 days without congressional approval. On Friday, he said that the nation’s capital was merely the first city that is likely to see members of the military patrolling the streets.
“We haven’t had to bring in the regular military, which we’re willing to do if we have to,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday. “After we do this, we’ll go to another location, and we’ll make it safe.”
“Probably next, that will be our next one after this, and it won’t even be tough,” the president said. “I think Chicago will be our next and then we’ll help with New York.”
On Thursday, in response to the president’s musings, the governor of Maryland, Wes Moore, invited the president to tour the streets of Baltimore with him. The city has seen a decrease in violent crime in the last two years, with the number of murders down 22 percent between summer 2024 and summer 2025, and the number of non-fatal shootings down 19 percent in that same period.
The city is well below its annual pace of homicides, falling to 87 so far this year compared to 202 for the entirety of 2024. Nonetheless, the city has still experienced more than 5,200 violent crimes and more than 33,300 property crimes to date this year. By some measures, it is ranked the most dangerous large city in America.
However, accompanying the falling crime rates is an increase in the number of new officers being sworn into the police department’s ranks. In 2024, the city’s police force swore in 160 new officers — a 37 percent increase over 2023. Another 143 professional staffers at the department sworn in last year represented a 43 percent increase from 2023. The force is still 489 officers short of its goal of nearly 3,000 officers.
“Governor Wes Moore of Maryland has asked, in a rather nasty and provocative tone, that I ‘walk the streets of Maryland’ with him. I assume he is talking about out of control, crime ridden, Baltimore?” the president responded to the invitation in a Truth Social post on Sunday. “As President, I would much prefer that he clean up this Crime disaster before I go there for a ‘walk.’ Wes Moore’s record on Crime is a very bad one.”
Washington has similarly seen a sharp increase in the number of officers, detectives, and staff working for the Metropolitan Police Department in the last year. According to data shared by the city, the total number of sworn officials working at the department has increased nearly 19 percent just between August 2024 and August 2025. D.C. has the highest ratio of police officers per capita of any large city in the country while Baltimore is second, according to city-data.com
The district has also seen a commensurate decrease in crime, year-over-year. The most recent data from MPD, which was Friday, shows violent and non-violent crime statistics fell rapidly in 2025. Total violent crime, including homicide, sexual abuse, and assault has decreased by 27 percent. The total number of murders has gone down by 12 percent, while the number of reported instances of sex abuse have decreased by 49 percent.
At the same time, property crime has fallen by just 5 percent, with the number of burglaries decreasing by 20 percent and the number of motor vehicle thefts down by 3 percent. Overall, crime at the district has fallen by 8 percent over the course of the year.
Though the president says he’s targeting New York City, the city doesn’t even rank in the top 25 of highest crime rates. In July, it marked the lowest number of shootings ever recorded. It is also seeing a spike in police recruits. Last week, the city’s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, told a class of new recruits at the police academy that the department was seeing a boom of applicants.
“This is proof that people want to be cops again,” she said. “It shows that this profession is back in a big way.” The new class of recruits reached nearly 1,110 in total, which Ms. Tisch says is the largest group to begin the police academy course in nearly a decade.
Mr. Trump’s threat to send the military into Chicago received strong push back from Illinois’ governor, JB Pritzker, and the city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson.
Mr. Johnson, warned that deploying the National Guard to Chicago “has the potential to inflame tensions between residents and law enforcement.” While the city has seen a bit of a dip in crime — falling at a much smaller rate than comparable sized cities, it has not had the same kind of recruiting bump as other major metro areas. Instead, the number of sworn officers fell slightly between July 2024 and July 2025.
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