Six Republican-led states are sending a collective 1,200 National Guard troops to assist Donald Trump’s crackdown on crime in Washington, D.C. But the states those troops came from have higher crime rates than the nation’s capital.
As Washington’s residents brutally resist the president’s authoritarian takeover of local law enforcement and deployment of federal troops, other states would do well to remember the old proverb: Doctor, heal thyself!
To compare, The New Republic has evaluated the FBI’s national crime data for 2024 alongside state populations, focusing on available data documenting violent and property crime rates in major cities in Ohio, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and West Virginia.
FBI data showed that in 2024, for every 100,000 Washington residents, 926 were victims of violent crime and 3,588 were victims of property crime. In 2024, the nation’s capital saw roughly 25 murders for every 100,000 residents.
Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio, experienced higher rates of both violent crime and property crime than Washington did in 2024, according to Cleveland.com. For every 100,000 Clevelanders, 1,550 were victims of a violent crime and 4,446 were victims of property crime. Cleveland also had a higher homicide rate than Washington in 2024, with 35 homicides for every 100,000 residents, according to the office of the Cuyahoga County medical examiner.
Columbus, which is Ohio’s most populous city, has a comparatively smaller crime rate. It saw marked decreases in violent and property crime in 2024, according to the Columbus Division of Police.
Tennessee
Tennessee’s violent crime rate in 2024 was higher than the national average at roughly 597 violent crime incidents per 100,000 residents, according to FBI data compared to population. While that alone is not higher than the violent crime rate in Washington, that number doesn’t tell the whole story.
In 2024, the state’s own capital, Memphis, had a murder rate of 48 per 100,000 residents, according to The American Prospect—a number significantly higher than D.C.’s homicide rate.
Meanwhile, Nashville, the state’s most populous city, which was home to an estimated 704,963 people in 2024, experienced 8,473 violent crimes and 31,902 property crimes, according to the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department. That means that for every 100,000 Nashville residents, roughly 1,202 were the victims of violent crimes and 4,525 were the victims of property crimes, which are both higher than Washington’s crime rates.
Still, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee is set to send roughly 160 guard members to Washington this week.
Mississippi
For every 100,000 Mississippians, 118 were the victim of a violent crime and 751 were the victims of property crime, according to FBI data. The American Prospect reported that in 2024, Jackson, Mississippi, had the highest murder rate of any city in the country, experiencing a rate of 77 homicides per 100,000 residents, which was more than three times the homicide rate in Washington.
Louisiana
For every 100,000 Louisianians, 406 were the victim of a violent crime and 1,758 were the victim of a property crime. But state capital Baton Rouge had a murder rate of 36 per 100,000 in 2024, and New Orleans had a murder rate of 31 per 100,000—both of which are considerably higher than Washington’s homicide rate.
South Carolina
In 2024, for every 100,000 South Carolinians, only about 438 were the victim of a violent crime and 1,985 were the victim of a property crime. However, North Charleston, one of the state’s most populous cities, had a murder rate of 26 per 100,000 residents in 2024, according to The American Prospect. This places it on par with the homicide rate of Washington. South Carolina’s Republican Governor Henry McMaster ordered 200 troops to be deployed to the nation’s capital.
West Virginia
For every 100,000 West Virginians, 234 were victims of violent crime and 1,051 were victims of property crimes in 2024, in keeping with the state’s trend of being generally below the national average.
But the state’s most dangerous city is Beckley, which has a similar violent crime rate to Washington. With a population of 16,234, Beckley experienced 147 violent crimes in 2023, which equates to a rate of 905 violent crimes per 100,000.
By comparison, property crimes were off the charts. In 2023, there were a whopping 836 property crimes, so for every 100,000 Beckley-ians (again, there aren’t really that many), 5,149 would be a victim of a property crime, a rate significantly higher than that of Washington.
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