Crime Gone in a Week? The Politics Behind Trump’s Federal Crackdown.

Just days into his federal takeover of Washington’s police force, President Trump declared the problem solved.

“D.C. was a hellhole and now it’s safe,” he said. On Monday, he said he expected the same results in Chicago, the next city on his list for a federal crackdown on crime.

“We will solve Chicago within one week, maybe less, but within one week, we will have no crime in Chicago,” Trump told reporters on Monday.

Mr. Trump’s bold (and misleading) pronouncements expose a key strategy behind his tough-on-crime swagger. For the president, the idea of sending federal forces into American cities — exclusively in states or jurisdictions led by Democrats — is not so much about the complex and time-consuming work of rooting out crime.

Instead, experts on policing say, it’s about being seen as fighting crime, then reaping the political benefits.

Mr. Trump is far from the first politician to use crime as a political issue in an attempt to gain leverage over rivals. But few have done it before in such a way that is so often disconnected from crime statistics on the ground or without a long-term strategy to keep crime down after the show of force goes away.

“He’s not really taking on street crime,” said Jeffrey A. Butts, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “He’s using the crime issue for political posturing and political gain. He’s not alone doing that — a lot of politicians do that. He’s just doing it in ways that are much more dramatic and potentially harmful than other politicians.”

Mr. Trump is approaching the issue of crime with his typical rapid-fire style: issuing orders, deploying law enforcement officers and National Guard troops, taking on Democratic mayors and governors, all while making false and inaccurate statements both about the situation before he acted and the results he has achieved.

He has claimed that crime in Washington is worse than ever, when statistics show crime has been falling. Mr. Trump claimed those statistics were rigged, but, days later, took credit for the drop in crime. He now says there is no crime in D.C. at all, which also is not true. The city continues to see robberies and motor vehicle thefts, among other crimes.

The Trump administration has canceled grants to local jurisdictions worth more than $800 million for hundreds of justice-related programs, including violence prevention and support for law enforcement — the very type of funding that local leaders say is necessary to keep crime down in the long term. And he has threatened to withhold other funding from leaders who publicly oppose him.

Still, many see Mr. Trump’s actions as smart politics or even long-overdue necessary steps. Adam Gelb, the president and chief executive of the Council on Criminal Justice, a policy think tank, said Mr. Trump’s actions could have a short-term effect, because “removing dangerous people and putting more eyes on the street can help.”

But he cautioned that without a long-term strategy, “whatever gains we’re seeing now will be fleeting.”

High crime rates have persisted in Washington, Baltimore and Chicago for decades. And while homicides in all three cities are down this year, residents readily acknowledge that crime is still too high.

The D.C. Police Union has backed Mr. Trump’s takeover of the police force.

“This town averaged one murder every other day for the last 20, 30 years,” Vice President JD Vance said in the Oval Office, “which means that in two short weeks, the president and the team have saved six or seven lives.”

The Trump administration said its operation in Washington had thus far produced 1,000 arrests, including the seizure of 111 firearms.

Asked whether he would send in the National Guard to cities located in red states, Mr. Trump said he would. “Sure, but there aren’t that many of them,” he said.

Several American cities, like Little Rock, Ark., and Virginia Beach, Va., have experienced a spike in homicides. But none of them, located in states with Republican governors, has yet been the target of federal force.

“The targeted cities are among the most violent in the country, but there are some very glaring omissions, especially Detroit, Memphis and St. Louis,” Mr. Gelb said. “It’s hard to escape noticing that the targets are in solidly blue states, but not in red or purple ones.”

Whenever Mr. Trump has found himself in a tricky political situation, such as blowback over a failure to release the so-called Epstein Files, he has tended to retreat to two issues he sees as political winners: immigration and crime.

Gregg Barak, an emeritus professor of criminology at Eastern Michigan University, called Mr. Trump’s actions “pretty transparent.”

“Crime is performance, crime is diversion,” he said. “If he was serious about crime, he’d restore the billion dollars he’s taken from the city; he would put in more law enforcement personnel; he would put in more local court judges, all of the things that you would do if you really wanted to address crime.”