XPost: alt.law-enforcement, alt.politics.trump, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: sac.politics, talk.politics.guns   
   From: leroysoetoro@americans-first.com   
      
   https://amac.us/newsline/politics/crime-stats-plummet-as-trumps-return-   
   ushers-in-peaceful-2025/   
      
   For those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome, the state of the   
   nation seems likely to produce more of a New Year’s breakdown than a   
   rebirth of hope. Predictions of Trump-induced societal collapse have   
   proven not only untrue but backward. Gas prices are at four-year lows,   
   U.S. GDP grew by 4.3 percent in the third quarter, and, as even NPR   
   admits, preliminary data show crime has plummeted in this first year of   
   the second Trump administration to levels not seen in decades.   
      
   Peace on earth? Clearly not. As any pious Jew or Christian can tell you,   
   Heaven on earth isn’t possible, and it’s best not to put too much stock in   
   our own abilities lest we create a hell instead. Yet reports of peace and   
   prosperity are nonetheless a good reminder of what a government should and   
   can do to secure the safety of the people.   
      
   One can argue with how much credit to give any presidential administration   
   for good economic outcomes (though I think it clear this one deserves a   
   good deal of credit). The dramatic reduction in crime this year, however,   
   clearly has a great deal to do with the new chief executive.   
      
   How dramatic has the improvement been? Axios, reporting on data from the   
   Real-Time Crime Index through October, found that, from 2024 to 2025,   
   almost every category of crime was down—often by double-digit percentages.   
   While we won’t know the final data until the FBI releases final figures   
   sometime in 2026, “RTCI estimates have historically tracked closely with   
   federal figures.”   
      
   To take just a few of those estimates: violent crime was down by 10.2%;   
   property crime by 12.3%; robbery by 18.3%; murder by 19.8%; and car theft   
   by 23.2%.   
      
   Astonishing!   
      
   As one might guess, the legacy media outlets reporting this good news feel   
   constrained to tell us that it can’t be due to the change in our   
   government. Or at least, they claim, we really can’t tell if Trump should   
   get the credit. Axios admits that fighting crime has been a major emphasis   
   of the Trump administration but claims there is “no clear evidence linking   
   his policies to the decline.” NPR, still absurdly trying to tie everything   
   to COVID-19,tells us that the reason for the drop is simply that “the   
   nation is over the hump of the pandemic.”   
      
   Rather than credit the Trump deployment of National Guard troops to cities   
   such as Washington, D.C., and Chicago, the President’s critics simply   
   claim that the relatively safer streets are part of a general continuing   
   drop in crime, which may be just like a communicable disease. NPR quotes   
   John Roman, director of a research center at the University of Chicago,   
   who explains: “It’s helpful to think of violence as an epidemic. More   
   crime leads to more crime, and less leads to less, just like more   
   instances of a virus can lead to more people becoming infected.”   
      
   That “expert” opinion is not very believable, for a number of reasons.   
      
   First, just because the data showed a slight downward trend in 2024 didn’t   
   mean it would continue in 2025. There’s something oddly pathetic about   
   treating crime as if it were a virus for which we really can’t do   
   much—particularly after the same expert class told us that wearing masks,   
   closing schools, and shuttering churches while keeping liquor stores open   
   and greenlighting mass street protests would stop COVID-19.   
      
   Second, we can’t even really be confident that there was a downward trend   
   in 2024, because we know that the Biden administration was cooking the   
   books on crime stats the years before that. Last fall, John Lott, Jr.,   
   reported at Real Clear Investigations on stealth changes the Biden FBI had   
   made to the data for 2021 and 2022.   
      
   The revised data for 2022, advertised as the year things turned around on   
   crime, showed not declines but a rise in violent crime: “The updated data   
   for 2022 report that there were 80,029 more violent crimes than in 2021.   
   There were an additional 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies, and   
   37,091 aggravated assaults. The question naturally arises: should the   
   FBI’s 2023 numbers be believed?” The same question applies for 2024.   
      
   Without trustworthy data for the last four years, we can’t really know how   
   bad things were. It may be that the decline in violent crime under Trump   
   this year is even more impressive than the “official” numbers show.   
      
   Third, we know that the timing of many of the drops in crime this year   
   coincided with aggressive action against illegal aliens and the deployment   
   of federal troops to crime hotspots. Elizabeth Stauffer of Legal   
   Insurrection reported in May on the swift and immediate drops in murders   
   in the first quarter of 2025 that coincided with ICE’s focus on illegal   
   aliens—especially those in the Tren de Aragua gang—in the Denver area and   
   Colorado more broadly.   
      
   Focusing on criminal illegal aliens is a no-brainer given what we know now   
   about the criminals who crossed our border. Last fall, Texas   
   Representative Tony Gonzalez wrote to Joe Biden and DHS Secretary   
   Alejandro Mayorkas about potential criminals among illegal aliens. Then-   
   director of ICE, Patrick Lechleiter, responded with these astonishing   
   figures about the noncitizen population of the United States: “662,566   
   noncitizens with criminal histories,” including 13,099 convicted of   
   murder, 62,231 convicted of assault, and 15,811 convicted of rape. Add to   
   each of these categories thousands with pending charges.   
      
   Concerning those National Guard deployments, even Axios notes that in   
   Washington, D.C., and Chicago, murders declined by 28%—almost ten points   
   more than the national decline.   
      
   Fourth, we know that approximately 5,000 FBI employees (13% of the   
   Bureau!) were working on January 6 cases under Biden. Reassigning agents   
   away from targeting nonviolent protesters who “paraded” in the Capitol and   
   toward identifying and arresting real criminals is a pretty good way to   
   reduce crime.   
      
   There are very solid reasons to attribute the massive drops in crime not   
   to some nebulous “virus” model of how crime works or mere happenstance,   
   but rather to changes in the way our government approaches crime.   
      
   True peace, which involves the healing of hearts and minds, can come   
   neither from the barrel of a gun, the pen of the legislator, or the   
   actions of the executive. But that doesn’t mean government can’t do the   
   first and most fundamental job of maintaining order and public safety.   
      
   “Government’s first duty is to protect the people,” President Reagan told   
   a 1981 gathering of the AFL-CIO and representatives of the building   
   trades, “not to run their lives.” The Trump administration is now acting   
   upon that simple truth.   
      
   David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. A past   
      
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