When Donald Trump campaigned vigorously for the 2024 presidential election, he leaned heavily on the narrative that Democrats were overseeing an alarming spike in crime. He pointed to increasing rates of murder and assault as proof of an ‘out-of-control crime wave’ across the United States. However, data released by the FBI recently tells a different story, showcasing a safer nation in the last full year of the Biden presidency.
According to the FBI’s annual crime statistics report, there was a notable 4.5% drop in violent crime nationwide in 2024 compared to the previous year. Specifically, murders and non-negligent manslaughter saw an astonishing 14.5% decrease.
Rape incidents fell by 5.2%, and there were reductions in cases of aggravated assaults and robberies by 3% and 8.9% respectively. This data starkly contradicts Trump’s repeated claims throughout his campaign that ‘soft-on-crime’ Democrats were behind what he portrayed as rocketing crime rates, particularly in urban areas they govern.
For instance, during a court appearance in May 2024, Trump expressed his outrage at New York’s busy streets, saying, “people are being mugged and killed outside … I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.” Yet the statistics reveal that cities with over a million people reported a 19.1% decline in murders, marking the greatest decrease in any crime category, with rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults also showing notable drops.
According to crime analyst Jeff Asher, the murder rate in 2024 was down a stunning 26% from 2020 and was comparable to pre-pandemic rates. He highlighted that the reported figures for violent and property crimes are the lowest seen since the 1960s.
Asher did add, however, a note of caution, indicating that crime data is compiled through voluntary statistics from over 16,000 law enforcement agencies. This means not every crime gets reported each year, so the reported data might not account for every incident.
Nonetheless, he suggested that these numbers could hint at continued declines in crime rates moving forward, potentially birthingly the lowest murder rates on record for 2025.
Throughout 2024, the FBI noted over 14 million crime incidents around the nation. The statistics published indicate that, on average, a violent crime occurred every 25.9 seconds, alongside one murder every 31.1 minutes and a rape every 4.1 minutes.
This report covers various crime categories, including an investigation into hate crimes and specific assaults on law enforcement officers. The data regarding hate crimes captured incidents from 95.1% of the US populace, with 11,679 reports filed and thousands of incidents attributed to bias against race, religion, or other identities, indicating slight declines from 2023 records.
However, the accuracy of these hate crime statistics drew scrutiny from the Arab American Institute. The executive director, Maya Berry, emphasized the need for caution in interpreting these numbers, citing ongoing issues with underreporting and politicization affecting data collection.
Then, turning to the perilous reality for law enforcement, the report revealed that 64 officers were fatally shot while on duty during 2024, with a significant portion resulting from firearms incidents. Also notable, the number of officers reporting assaults reached a decade-high at 85,730.
Statistics for 2025 are anticipated to explore these trends further, particularly in light of assertions from the Department of Homeland Security regarding a staggering 830% rise in assaults against immigration and custom enforcement agents since Trump’s return to power.
There’s an ongoing discussion among prosecutors regarding whether many cases should advance despite challenges with misleading claims from some officers, often because the actual assaults depicted involved victims rather than perpetrators.
