Alongside immigration and inflation, Americans rated rising crime their foremost concern during the 2024 campaign.
Americans must remain focused on the fundamental truth that public safety requires a robust police presence, properly funded law enforcement, prosecutors who take their jobs to protect the public seriously and political leaders who will stand up for law enforcement.
On that front, President Trump’s early performance returns are impressive, even as core criminal elements erupt in riots in Los Angeles, California.
In recent years, Americans endured the consequences of a nationwide retreat from tougher law enforcement. Beginning with the fraudulent “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” incident involving Michael Brown in 2014, then accelerating during the Covid pandemic and George Floyd aftermath, the nation experienced a jarring surge in violent crime. In 2020, the United States actually suffered its largest single-year murder rate increase ever recorded, reversing two decades of improvements beginning in the tough-on-crime 1990s.
Through the Biden administration, despite claims of improvement, the situation continued to deteriorate.
Specifically, last year the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) acknowledged that initial claims of a 2022 decline in crime were incorrect. After first stating that crime declined by 2.1% that year, it later admitted that crime actually increased by 4.5%. Additionally, public surveys also revealed a depressing continuation of higher crime trends. A National Crime Victimization Survey of 230,000 Americans revealed that violent crime rates had actually increased by 40% since 2019, while property crime rates also increased by 26% in that time frame.
That followed a surge in anti-police activism that quickly metastasized into defective public policy from cowardly political leaders. Across the nation, many cities defunded police departments, while prosecutors brazenly refused to prosecute entire categories of crime while “reformers” championed no-cash bail, shorter incarceration sentences and even abolition of police departments.
Naturally, criminals emboldened by a decaying justice system capitalized on the ensuing chaos. Across major urban centers like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and places like Portland, Oregon, lawlessness and crime rates surged. Smash-and-grab retail theft became commonplace, while carjackings became epidemic and formerly safe public spaces became too dangerous to visit.
Undeterred, too many leftist political leaders and media figures doubled down on their advocacy, rationalizing growing crime as the result of economic inequality to even climate change.
Everyday Americans, however, knew better. They understood that demonization of police and permissiveness toward criminals led to chaos and suffering.
Fed up with those trends, American voters demanded a course correction. In the past couple of years, voters have cast out the most egregiously permissive prosecutors and political leaders, while also electing tougher prosecutors even in hyper-leftist redoubts like Los Angeles.
Priorities shifted at the federal level as well, as noted above. Americans who had reached their collective limit returned Donald Trump to office last year, largely due to their prioritization of law-and-order issues in the election.
Mere months later, reasons for optimism continue to emerge. New data confirms what many Americans may have sensed already in their neighborhoods and daily lives. Namely, after years of escalating lawlessness, we’re witnessing dramatic declines in crime.
In fact, we’re witnessing record declines.
According to the Real Time Crime Index, homicides through the first four months of 2025 have declined an astonishing 21.5% compared to the same period for 2024. Additionally, robberies have declined 20%, motor vehicle theft is down 26% and rape is down 10.7%.
What’s particularly encouraging, and suggests a nationwide shift in attitudes, those improvements aren’t isolated. Rather, nearly every major city in America now reports double-digit decreases in crime rates.
Those aren’t abstract concepts or sterile statistics. They represent lives saved, businesses protected, neighborhoods healing and the nation perhaps breathing a sigh of relief. Los Angeles riots notwithstanding, the public tide appears to have finally turned.
While that merits celebration, the forces that caused the post-2014 crime rise haven’t disappeared. Ideological hostility toward police, activist-driven criminal law “reform” and even denying the existence of violence as we’re witnessing in Los Angeles right now remain. Some district attorneys will refuse to prosecute criminals, leftist lawmakers will still propose defunding the police and radical organizations will push policies that prioritize criminals over societal safety.
That requires continuing vigilance. Americans must remain focused on the fundamental truth that public safety requires a robust police presence, properly funded law enforcement, prosecutors who take their jobs to protect the public seriously and political leaders who will stand up for law enforcement.
The recent reversal in America’s crime trend is an important story, but let’s continue to maintain that momentum by supporting law enforcement and tough-on-crime public policies.