President Trump said violent crime in big cities was 'out of control'

The new FBI report on 2024 data says otherwise.

By Jeff Nesbit

Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump told a powerful and persistent story about America. Over and over and over. A story of a nation spiraling into lawlessness, where violent crime was not just rising but was “out of control” and “way up.”

Trump painted a grim picture of America’s largest cities (nearly all of them with Democratic mayors): “We’ve never seen crime like this before.”

This narrative of fear was a central theme of his presidential campaign. It shaped the anxieties of tens of millions of voters.

Trump was wrong.

This week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released its official "Reported Crimes in the Nation" for 2024. The data does not just contradict the campaign rhetoric; it shatters it.

The chasm between the public’s fear of crime, relentlessly fueled by political messaging, and the statistical truth presents a danger to effective policymaking. To forge real solutions, we must ground our national conversation in facts, not fear.

The FBI’s data is unambiguous. Far from being “out of control,” violent crime in the United States fell by an estimated 4.5% in 2024. The numbers are even more striking when you break them down.

Murders, the most serious of violent offenses, didn’t just dip; they plummeted by a staggering 14.9%. Robberies fell by nearly 9%, reaching one of their lowest rates in the last two decades. The trend holds for property crime as well, which saw a significant 18.6% drop in motor vehicle thefts.

This isn’t an anomaly or a statistical blip. These figures continue a broad, nationwide trend of decreasing crime since the spike observed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In fact, some analyses show the overall property crime rate is now at its lowest point since 1961. The story the data tells is one of remarkable progress and increasing public safety.

So why do so many Americans feel less safe than they are?

The answer lies in the powerful gap between perception and reality. A relentless drumbeat of alarmist rhetoric—almost all from Trump and GOP surrogates—during a high-stakes election can profoundly shape public opinion, regardless of the facts on the ground.

For years, polling from institutions such as Gallup has shown that a majority of Americans believe crime is getting worse, a belief that often aligns with partisan identity rather than empirical data.

This phenomenon is amplified by a media ecosystem where the old adage “if it bleeds, it leads” still holds true. Local news coverage, by its nature, often highlights individual acts of violence, creating a distorted sense of daily risk that overshadows the broader, positive national trends.

However, to build a truly credible picture of public safety, you have to actually engage with the data honestly and avoid cherry-picking only the good news.

Within the largely positive FBI report lies a deeply troubling and contradictory trend: assaults on police officers are on the rise. In 2024, there were 85,730 reported assaults on law enforcement, marking a 10-year high. This figure is so alarming that the FBI has launched an in-depth behavioral study to understand its root causes.

This isn't just a statistic; it's a critical warning sign. It complicates the simple "crime is down" narrative and points to deeper, more complex societal issues, perhaps including a dangerous erosion of trust in public institutions and a breakdown in police-community relations.

The dominant political narrative on crime in 2024 was demonstrably false. But governing by soundbite, whether the news is good or bad, is a disservice to the American people.

A country that is getting safer from violent crime but simultaneously more dangerous for the officers sworn to protect it requires sober analysis, not political slogans.

If we truly want to make our communities safer, we have to demand that our leaders and media move beyond fearmongering and focus on the real, nuanced challenges the data reveals.

Jeff Nesbit was the public affairs chief for five Cabinet departments or agencies for four presidents.

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