Democratic Mayors Tout Success in Reducing Violent Crime in Their Cities

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson – screenshot from zoom press conference

Democratic Mayors Push Back against GOP Crime Narrative, Cite Major Declines in Violence and Proven Community Investments

Key points:

• Democratic mayors defend their cities’ efforts to reduce violent crime.
• Homicides are down 22.6% across the country since 2020, according to Vera Action Institute.
• Democratic mayors criticize media for sensationalizing crime, distorting public view.

In a virtual convening hosted in collaboration with the Vera Action Institute, Democratic mayors from Cleveland, Chicago, Baltimore, and Newark offered a vigorous defense of their cities’ efforts to reduce violent crime—arguing that Democratic-led urban centers are leading the country in crime reduction through data-driven, community-focused, and comprehensive public safety strategies.

The roundtable was introduced by Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, president of the Democratic Mayors Association, who opened the conversation by drawing a sharp contrast between local results and federal rhetoric.

“We wanted to have this conversation [about] the work that Democratic mayors all across this country are doing to reduce violent crime despite the chaos and cruelty and confusion coming out of D.C.,” Bibb said. “Since I took office nearly three years ago, we’ve seen a nearly 46% reduction in homicides while investing in law enforcement, but also investing in nonviolence interventions… deploying an all-of-government approach to solve violent crime.”

The conversation was co-hosted by Insha Rahman, director of the Vera Action Institute, who underscored the national context of this progress.

“Homicides are down a whopping 22.6% across the country” since 2020, she said, referencing the height of the pandemic. “But it’s not just homicides. Violent crime overall is down 6.4%, and property crime is down 8.8%.”

Rahman notedthat these improvements are not random fluctuations but the result of intentional investments and policy strategies, especially in cities led by Democratic mayors.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson laid out his administration’s targeted approach, noting that his team focused on the 35 most violent beats in the city—areas marked by historic disinvestment, high poverty, and shuttered schools and clinics.

“Our approach has been pretty straightforward, really simple,” Johnson said. “We worked with our police department to strategically deploy our officers to areas where they were needed the most. Essentially, we completed a strategic overhaul of our detective bureau so that we could actually solve crime.”

Johnson pledged to add 200 detectives and fulfilled that promise within two years. “We are seeing the dividends from that particular investment,” he said. “We built strategic partnerships with community violence intervention groups… We added CVI programs to our hospitals to work with victims of gun violence. We put forth over $100 million in our respective budgets around violence prevention. We also added mental health clinics on the South and West Sides.”

He also pointed to a major expansion in mental health response: “We doubled our program where mental health professionals are showing up to mental health crises. Forty percent of the 911 calls that were coming through were mental health crises. Now we actually have mental health professionals showing up to intervene.”

Chicago has seen a 33% decline in homicides this year, with shootings and shooting victims down 38% and robberies down 34%. “By no means are we satisfied,” Johnson said, “but we are encouraged by the progress that we’ve made… All rooted in investments, addressing the root causes of violence, and being very strategic about constitutional policing.”

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott shared a deeply personal motivation for his administration’s work: “Gun violence is what pushed me into public service. Being someone that saw someone get shot for the first time before my seventh birthday is what made me want to… serve,” he said.

Scott noted that Baltimore’s comprehensive strategy—developed after his years of experience as a staffer, councilmember, council president, and now mayor—is rooted in treating violence as a public health issue.

“We’re now in five out of our nine police districts,” he said. The city’s Group Violence Reduction Strategy includes direct outreach to those at highest risk.

“We go to those individuals and say, ‘I know who you are. I know what you do. We want you to stay alive… But you cannot do that, keep doing the things that you are doing. If you need help with housing… education… job training… mental health—we will give it to you. But if you do not adhere… we will remove you with law enforcement.’”

He also described Baltimore’s $50 million investment in community violence intervention programs funded through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), along with a dramatic shift in focus toward recreational infrastructure and youth engagement.

“We’re building more rec centers than we’ve seen in the city in quite a long time… We had 8,500 young people in YouthWorks this summer,” he said. “All of that worked together.”

The results are historic.

“Baltimore [now has] the lowest amount of violent crime and homicides that we’ve seen through July 31st in the history of this city,” Scott said. He contrasted that with a prior era of zero-tolerance policing. In 2003, he noted, the Baltimore Police Department made 91,000 arrests and saw 270 homicides.

“Last year, we made 17,000 arrests. There were 197 homicides,” he said. “It’s never been about how many arrests a police department is making—it’s about who and for what and the certainty of accountability.”

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who has served since 2014, was credited by fellow mayors as the “OG” of public safety reform.

“We began looking at crime as a public health issue as early as 2010,” Baraka said. “We called it the Coordinated Intervention Strategy. The Newark Community Street Team was one of the first organizations stood up to help us.”

Newark implemented intelligence-based policing, community-led violence interventions, safe passage programs for youth, trauma treatment for survivors, and high-risk summer academies for justice-involved young people.

“We make sure we put systems in place,” Baraka said. “You will have spikes, you will have incidents… The difference is that you have systems in place to respond.”

The results speak for themselves.

“Over 10 years, we have over a 60% reduction in violent crime and homicides,” he said. “We ended last year with 37 homicides. When I started, we had 112.”

Asked about challenges, the mayors cited several barriers. Scott said that the assumption that most violence came from young people was disproven by data.

“We were talking about 30-year-olds. We had to then wait and build up organizations to work with that age group,” he said.

Johnson noted Chicago’s deep-rooted distrust of law enforcement stemming from police torture scandals involving officers like Jon Burge.

“Once upon a time, CVI [community violence intervention] workers and police officers could not be in the same room,” Johnson said. “Now we’re breaking through those challenges.”

Baraka warned that public perception often lags behind data and is distorted by media sensationalism. A Rutgers study found that 80% of Newark residents experienced no violent crime, but the remaining 20% endured nearly all of it. “That means that 20% of the city experiences almost 100% of the violence,” Baraka said. “And we have to focus on those specific communities.”

All the mayors agreed that the media plays a powerful role in shaping public understanding.

“The media is complicit,” Bibb said. “The Republican Party spent over a billion dollars with false narratives that Democrat-led cities can’t be run effectively… We must do a better job of telling our story.”

The mayors also condemned the Trump administration’s April 2025 decision to terminate $820 million in DOJ grants supporting community violence intervention, diversion programs, reentry services, and victim services.

“It’s a blatant attack on blue cities,” said Bibb. “We’ve used these dollars to hire more community violence interrupters, support high-quality mentoring programs… and invest in capacity building efforts like the Peacemakers Alliance.”

“There is no replacement for the federal government in investing in these initiatives,” Bibb said. “But Washington ain’t coming to save us… We must hold this president and this Republican-led Congress accountable. You don’t have a damn right to attack us when you take away our funding that’s proven to work.”

The mayors pledged to continue leveraging local resources and partnerships to sustain their progress.

“This is good news,” Johnson said. “To have the safest, most affordable big city in America… it is going to take literally all of us.”

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