President Trump took credit on Friday for what he said is the nation’s “best crime record in recorded history,” pointing to new crime data on 2025 released by the F.B.I. on Friday.
The president said that “every single number” in the report was the lowest in recorded history, which is not the case. While the president made sweeping, exaggerated claims, crime analysts agree that 2025 was a remarkable year, with record declines and historically low crime rates.
“The 2025 murder rate is tied with 1955 and 1956 for the lowest rate since F.B.I. estimations began in 1936,” the new F.B.I. report says. Independent analysts have gone further, questioning the accuracy of the 1950s estimates and saying that murder is most likely at the lowest rate ever recorded in crime and public health data.
Jeff Asher, an expert on crime statistics, wrote in a newsletter on Friday that the drops were not necessarily surprising, given the trends in recent years. “The bottom line is that the U.S. murder rate was lower last year than it has been in the lifetime of anyone born after Kennedy was elected president, and it’s plunging even lower in 2026,” he said.
Mr. Trump pointed to his administration’s efforts to limit immigration and increase deportations as one reason for the reductions. He also claimed that his personal support for law enforcement had helped bring about the change.
“Together we’re showing what is possible when you finally have a president in the White House who supports our police,” he said.
He said that federal intervention in Washington, Memphis and New Orleans had led to major crime declines in those places. “In Memphis, crime is down 71 percent. In New Orleans, crime is down 75 percent. And in D.C., crime is down 81 percent,” Mr. Trump said.
But drops of that scale are not reflected in the available data. In Washington, police department data shows that violent crime was down by 18 percent in 2025 compared wtih the year before. Crime this year in the capital is down 20 percent compared with the same period last year.
In New Orleans, murders declined by 3 percent, fatal shootings dropped 21 percent, armed robberies decreased 28 percent and carjackings dropped 35 percent from 2024 to 2025. So far this year, crime has ticked up 5 percent.
In Washington, the National Guard likely contributed to a decrease in property crimes, according to a June report from the Niskanen Center, a centrist think tank. But the same report said the Guard had barely any effect on violent crime. Robberies and homicides declined at roughly the same rates before and after the Guard arrived, the report found.
Memphis came closer to Mr. Trump’s numbers, reporting a decline of 27 percent in major crimes in 2025, and a further decline so far this year of 60 percent.
The decline in crime predates Mr. Trump’s current term in office. Crime spiked during the first years of the pandemic. There were also major street protests of police brutality and criticism of law enforcement.
But in 2022, during the Biden administration, violent crime began to subside. Carjackings and some types of property crime, like car theft, peaked a little later before beginning to decline.
Crime experts say that the picture has continued to improve in 2026, which is on track to reach new lows. But the causes, they cautioned, are unclear.
“That means lives saved, families spared trauma, and communities made safer — and it deserves to be celebrated,” said Adam Gelb, the president of the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank. “But the reasons for the decline are much less clear than the decline itself.”
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