While Trump cracks down on D.C. violence, Gotham is in a similar situation; crime is dropping, but is still too frequent and arbitrary to give residents comfort.
A fter President Trump declared federal control of the D.C. police department, personal anecdotes from D.C. crime victims flooded X. The reality is that while violent crime in Washington is down, it’s still at an unacceptable level. The District of Columbia has been terrorized for too long by brazen carjackings, break-ins, stabbings, muggings, and other attacks, many committed by juveniles.
So the president’s new campaign to crush crime in the capital, while dramatic, has put hostile media outlets in the awkward position of defending the indefensible. They’re trying, of course — but right now, they look like they’re worried more about Trump’s intervention to curb crime than about the crime itself.
As a resident of New York City, which deals with similar mayhem, I think we can walk and chew gum. We can celebrate our cities’ innumerable assets while refusing to tolerate the bad policies that endanger citizens. And as Trump plays the flawed billionaire bringing a semblance of justice to the streets of D.C., we must also remember the perils facing Gotham — New York City, that is — which could become even more of a playground for criminals if the November mayoral election goes wrong.
Like D.C., New York City has technically experienced a drop in crime, which decreased by nearly 3 percent in 2024 compared with 2023. The city reports that major crimes continued to decline in the first half of 2025, with New York experiencing the lowest number of shootings and murders from January to May in recorded history. Yet the numbers are of little comfort if you’re strolling in Midtown one day and learn that a madman is spraying bullets in the lobby of a major high-rise a few blocks over. In one episode just last week, a 17-year-old gunman decided to escalate a kerfuffle with a Citi Bike rider by opening fire on a bunch of cyclists moving through Times Square.
The swarm of “fact checkers” rushing to debunk Trump’s claim that D.C. crime is “out of control” reminds me of the Biden administration’s insistence that inflation was coming down from the Covid spending–fueled highs a couple of years ago. Karine Jean-Pierre said it until she was blue in the face, but that didn’t stop voters from noticing, “Okay, but cereal is $8.” Similarly, in both D.C. and New York City, the numbers don’t always translate to a sense of greater safety. It’s hard to be optimistic about the stats if you’ve had your car broken into and windows smashed not one, not two, but five times.
In March 2024, New York Governor Kathy Hochul deployed 1,000 state police officers and National Guard to the New York City subway system following a string of heinous attacks. They included a subway conductor getting stabbed in the neck at a Brooklyn station and a 64-year-old man falling into the tracks after someone kicked him in the back. Months later, three days shy of Christmas, a deranged rider, who was later identified as an illegal alien, threw a match on a sleeping woman on a subway car and burned her alive.
To me, the apparent difference between crime in D.C. and in NYC is that the former grapples most noticeably with carjackings and related crimes, and the latter seems to be plagued by shocking violence perpetrated by wackos, or “emotionally disturbed persons,” as the left euphemizes. Regardless, crime is still far too routine in both of these cities, in large part because progressive governance enables it, such as with bail “reform.” The most effective remedy for crime, regardless of the motivations behind it, is force. Mayor Eric Adams, a former cop in the NYPD, at least somewhat understands this, as he has added officers to the ranks and reversed budget cuts for the department. He recognizes that police presence is still a deterrent to crime and chaos.
Contrast that with NYC’s socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who in the past has urged defunding the police.
“We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti‑queer & a major threat to public safety,” he wrote on social media on June 28, 2020. “What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD. But your compromise uses budget tricks to keep as many cops as possible on the beat. NO to fake cuts — defund the police.”
Mamdani has also suggested he’d send social workers to defuse disturbances involving the mentally ill. Non-police professionals would function as “transit ambassadors” to handle certain 911 calls in NYC public transportation, Mamdani said last week. How would a social worker neutralize a maniac with a machete? He didn’t say. Though he claims to want to relieve overworked cops by diverting mental health calls to a different group, Mamdani has made it clear that he supports an NYPD with fewer teeth.
Adams, an independent candidate in the mayoral election with his own set of political liabilities, continues to reject the prevailing progressive approach to crime, given that it tends to make crime worse. This week, he and New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced the expansion of the NYPD’s Quality of Life Division, which does things like crack down on illegal mopeds, encampments, and outdoor drug use. This should be intuitive. Yet progressives like Mamdani keep trying to reinvent the wheel with supposedly more humane theories of policing.
The city’s governance and election may attract more heat from Trump in time. After all, it’s where he’s from and where he built his business empire. But one thing is clear: Washington isn’t the only big city whose residents need a policy of intolerance toward lawlessness.