Democrats face challenge in countering Trump on crime

Democrats are struggling to mount a response as Trump has federalized Washington, D.C., and seized control of the Metropolitan Police Department while threatening to take similar actions in other Democratic cities.

In interviews with The Hill, some Democrats have expressed frustration with their party’s emphasis on decreasing crime rates instead of focusing on the way voters feel walking the streets of their city.

“These crime statistics, as impressive as they are, are no substitute for how people feel and what they see, and Washington residents still feel like crime is too high and too pervasive, and … that reality has created this opening for Donald Trump,” said Democratic strategist Anthony Coley, who resides in the nation’s capital. 

“Now that is no excuse for this political stunt he is trying to do, but from a raw political perspective, you never want to give your political opponent an opening to address a real concern that your constituents have.”

In a press conference last week, Trump signaled that Washington was just the start of his federal crackdown on crime and Democratic cities across the country could be next.

“You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is,” Trump said. “We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don't even mention that anymore — they're so far gone.”

“We're not going to lose our cities over this, and this will go further,” Trump added.

Trump appealed to voters’ perceptions of crime during his 2024 campaign — even though crime rates in cities around the country were at multidecade lows. Now he is doubling down on his campaign rhetoric. 

A YouGov poll last week found that 89 percent of Americans think crime in U.S. cities is a problem. The poll also showed that more than half of Americans think crime in U.S. cities has increased since 2020.  

“One of the reasons that Trump has taken to this is because there's this impression that Democrats are soft on crime and that progressives are too lax on criminals and criminal activity,” Democratic strategist Basil Smikle said. “I think that it’s important to say that crime has gone down in part because communities did respond to the high crime rates. … It wasn't just more policing, and I think that's a very important point that they need to hammer home.”

In recent days, mayors of Democratic strongholds in Los Angeles, Oakland, New York, Chicago and Baltimore have pointed to their city’s decreasing crime rates, calling Trump’s moves baseless and power hungry. Many of them have also highlighted the policies they’ve implemented. 

“From my first day in office, public safety has been my top priority,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a statement Sunday. “In just two years we have made historic progress, driving down homicides by more than 30 percent and reducing shootings by almost 40 percent in the last year alone.”

“If President Trump wants to help make Chicago safer, he can start by releasing the funds for anti-violence programs that have been critical to our work to drive down crime and violence,” Johnson added. “Sending in the National Guard would only serve to destabilize our city and undermine our public safety efforts.”

And some Democrats say that’s really all they can be doing — at least until they’re able to take the battle to the courts. 

“This is more about who you are going to believe,” Democratic strategist Rodell Mollineau said. “There’s a lot of dog-whistle in there, and if people are susceptible to believing that, then it’s hard to combat it.”

“It’s hard to say that you should respond with anything but the truth, even if some people don’t want to hear the truth,” Mollineau added. “This is performative, and it’s not actually getting the results. I think that’s where we need to go, but I do think that there’s going to be a population that’s never going to believe us.”

At the same time, because Democrats have struggled with voters on crime, some strategists say now is the time for them to fine tune their policies — closing gaps that Trump could try to fill.  

“I do think, though, that there are legislative fixes and tweaks that many lawmaking bodies and democratically held cities should revisit, even as the data continues to fall,” Coley said.

He argues local government officials in D.C., in how they handled crime during and after the pandemic, created a political opening for Trump.

“So I think other cities should do what they can to further improve how people feel about public safety in their jurisdictions,” he added. “And they should do that now.”

Some Democrats say officials in their party have already done the work successfully and that sending that message to voters is what will ease their perceptions of unsafe streets.

“I don't think [Democrats] are out of touch because crime has gone down in these cities, so they know how to police their cities,” Smikle said. “They have to just remind voters that they brought crime down in their cities, and they know how to do that.”

Either way, Democrats say they will have to do something to convince voters they are competent on crime, but they say the political consequences could be low for Trump.

“Most of America has little to no sympathy for Washington, D.C. That became evident during the DOGE cuts,” said one Democratic strategist of the mass-layoffs by Trump’s Department of Government of Efficiency. “So while Americans should be concerned about an authoritarian power grab, I'm not sure it will resonate.”

“D.C. is on its own,” the strategist added.