It’s not just Trump. Much of deep-blue California stokes crime fears and distorts reality

The critique of President Trump’s power play in Washington, D.C., this week was immediate and intense because it was so obvious: Last year the District of Columbia’s violent crime rate dropped to its lowest point in the 21st century. Trump can’t honestly use crime trends to justify his seizure of the district’s Metropolitan Police Department or the deployment of National Guard troops and federal agents.

But he did it anyway, because he can. As a federal district excluded from any state, D.C. enjoys home rule only to the extent that the U.S. government permits it. Trump’s references to bands of “bloodthirsty criminals” roaming D.C. streets were not merely false, but unnecessary.

Trump also said he’d consider sending troops into cities that don’t have Washington’s special status, calling out Oakland, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Baltimore. Whether he can do that depends in part on the outcome of a trial this week over Trump’s use of National Guard troops in L.A. earlier this summer. A ruling is expected shortly.

Of the cities Trump cited, only Baltimore is among the nation’s top 10 for violent crime, according to FBI statistics, although Oakland is included in some analyses. But it’s probably more than coincidence that all four of Trump’s named cities are in so-called blue states that voted against him in three presidential elections.

Besides Baltimore, Trump didn’t mention the American cities most plagued by violent crime, including murder, perhaps because they are in states that supported him in 2024: Memphis, Tenn. St. Louis. Kansas City, Mo. Cleveland. Detroit. Little Rock, Ark. Milwaukee. New Orleans. Birmingham, Ala.

Dishonesty about urban crime, and using it to score political points, is a Trump specialty. During his 2016 campaign, he burrowed directly into the American psyche by dredging up images from the violent 1980s and 1990s. The worst crime of that era had long passed, having peaked in 1991, followed by a historic plunge that continues today despite occasional spikes. 

Still, Trump rode ancient crime fears to victory and spoke at his first inaugural as if the nation were still locked in an era of “American carnage.” So, yes, Trump is a maestro at uttering crime falsehoods and tapping latent crime fears to enhance his power.

But he’s not alone. 

Stoking crime fear for political gain is commonplace in American politics and is a tactic used freely by Democrats, Republicans, police, prosecutors, prison guards, and in fact pretty much anyone running for public office or pushing (or opposing) a ballot measure that could redirect public spending toward or away from law enforcement.

News outlets are in on the game. Programs that ordinarily wouldn’t report on anything as mundane as a committee hearing on a bill to lengthen criminal sentences often air stock footage of crooks ransacking store shelves. The constant replays turn an otherwise boring story into a fear-driven special report.

Newspapers sometimes present “true crime” features, replaying old stories of long-ago murders to keep the fear-fueled clicks coming.

Failing drug store chains blame their poor performance on exaggerated or purely imagined waves of shoplifting. Mayors and police chiefs feel pressure to respond by deploying more police, prosecutors promise longer sentences, lawmakers approve tough-on-crime bills — even if shoplifting has not, in fact, jumped, and even if it’s revealed that bad business decisions are the true reasons for the chains’ failures.

In California, where post-lockdown crime rose and fell variously in different cities but did not amount to a sustained statewide uptick, Democrats made a show of several “retail theft” hearings last year and the year before, and championed a package of tougher-on-crime bills that were geared more toward winning a strong turnout in congressional elections than in actually affecting crime rates. Voters passed Proposition 36, which chips away at historic reforms by turning repeat low-level property misdemeanors into felonies.

Yes, property crime is real and has serious negative consequences. Violent crime remains an ongoing problem not only in Oakland but in almost every California city, even though they’re not even close to the same category as high-crime Memphis or Little Rock. 

Those who argue that there is no crime, or that the crime that exists is no big deal, are playing as fast and loose with the facts as Trump. But calling crime one important urban challenge among many just doesn’t have the same cachet as calling it an emergency of historic proportions, or calling it a figment of the imagination. It neither defunds the police nor justifies more police hiring.

In his remarks on Washington, D.C., Trump cited several other falsehoods widely embraced across jurisdictions.

On bail, for example. Trump threatened to somehow override Illinois’ successful no-money-bail law on the argument that “somebody murders somebody and they’re out on no cash bail before the day is out.” The clueless statement repeats false tropes in California about no-cash bail. In fact, accused murderers are almost never released before trial — and when they are, it’s generally because they had money to bail out. No-cash-bail jurisdictions use a defendant’s risk to the community, rather than wealth or poverty, to make pretrial release decisions.

The Illinois law has had no effect on crime rates. Nor has the Los Angeles County Superior Court’s program of eliminating money bail between arrest and arraignment for people accused of lower-level crimes, although people accused of violent and other serious crimes in L.A. can often still bail out if they have money.

But that hasn’t stopped critics from complaining, despite the numbers, that no-cash-bail increases crime. In a contest between numbers and fear, numbers rarely prevail — as Trump knows well. His solution to numbers that don’t support his positions is to claim they are rigged, and to fire the people who calculated them, as he recently did with the chief of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Or to just cite random numbers, as he did when he claimed his program to reduce drug prices will bring costs down by 1,500% — which would mean that instead of paying for medication, Americans will get cash whenever they get their prescriptions filled.

Or to just ignore them, as he is doing with D.C.’s falling crime rate.

No one does it quite so brazenly, or with such swagger, as Trump. But many do it. Americans who don’t want their criminal justice policies and budgets to be guided by deception should be cautious and skeptical when they hear claims from any of their elected or law enforcement leaders, not just their president.