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That turnaround came after a shocking collapse in public safety beginning in 2020, when murders spiked by nearly 30 percent. The timing was not subtle. That surge coincided with nationwide riots following George Floyd’s death, relentless attacks on police, and sweeping budget cuts to law enforcement in Democrat-run cities.
Minneapolis became ground zero for the movement, with city leaders openly pushing to abolish their police department. Other left-wing strongholds followed suit. Los Angeles, Baltimore, Seattle, Chicago, and Portland stripped millions from police budgets and funneled money into social programs that failed to stop the bloodshed.
The consequences were immediate and deadly.
New York City saw murders skyrocket 45 percent from 2019 to 2020, jumping from 319 to 462. Chicago recorded 769 homicides in 2020, an increase of 274 killings in just one year. These were not abstract statistics. They represented lives lost and communities terrorized.
Liberals spent years blaming COVID for the violence, but the timeline tells a different story. Murders remained relatively stable when lockdowns began in March 2020. The explosion started weeks later—right after mass protests, riots, and the nationwide retreat from proactive policing.
Cities with the largest unrest experienced the worst spikes. Police were ordered to stand down. Prosecutors declined to charge offenders. Judges released criminals without bail. Violent offenders noticed.
What followed became known as the “Minneapolis Effect”—a sharp pullback in law enforcement that produced exactly what critics predicted: chaos.
That changed when Trump returned to office and made crime a national priority again.
Federal agencies were instructed to target violent offenders. ICE was deployed to apprehend criminal illegal aliens shielded by sanctuary policies. Washington, D.C.’s police department was federalized after the capital reached a 20-year murder high.
The results were impossible to ignore.
Denver reported a 41 percent drop in homicides. Washington, D.C. saw murders fall 40 percent. Chicago recorded a 30 percent decline. Property crime followed the same trend, with car thefts down 27 percent nationwide.
Even cities that once bragged about defunding police quietly reversed course by 2024, restoring funding under new names while pretending nothing had changed. Portland backtracked after becoming one of the most dangerous cities in America. Minneapolis voters flatly rejected abolishing their police department once reality set in.
Immigration enforcement played a major role as well.
In Trump’s first year back in office, ICE removed more than 670,000 criminal illegal aliens. Roughly 70 percent of those arrests involved individuals already charged with or convicted of crimes. Another two million illegal aliens self-deported rather than face arrest.
Democrats howled, filing lawsuits and accusing the administration of cruelty. But as MS-13 leaders, cartel members, child rapists, and terrorists were taken off the streets, murders declined. The bodies stopped piling up.
Cities like Baltimore and Dallas saw major improvements after focusing resources on high-risk offenders instead of listening to progressive prosecutors obsessed with ideological purity.
The lesson was simple and unavoidable.
When violent criminals are arrested, prosecuted, and kept behind bars, communities become safer. When ideology replaces enforcement, innocent people die.
The United States has now seen four straight years of declining homicide rates, with 2025 marking the most dramatic drop ever recorded. Murders are now 25 percent lower than in 2019. New York logged the fewest shootings in its recorded history. Philadelphia reported its lowest murder total in six decades.
These cities weren’t saved by social workers or progressive slogans. They were saved when police were allowed to do their jobs again—and when the federal government backed them up.
Trump promised law and order. He delivered the lowest murder rate since 1900.
Democrats spent years denying reality while calling critics racist for noticing the carnage. Now the numbers have spoken.
Their experiment failed. The truth won.
