White House cites low Delhi crime rates in Prez Trump’s campaign to take over law and order in US cities
New York: The White House is comparing the low murder rate in New Delhi to the high rate in Chicago as it builds its case for federal intervention in that city. US President Donald Trump’s Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that the Illinois city’s murder rate was 15 times higher than the Indian capital’s in 2024.
Chicago’s homicide rate was 25.5 per 100,000 residents according to city statistics, while Delhi’s was 1.48.
Earlier, to justify President Trump deploying the National Guard troops and federal law enforcement personnel in Washington the White House posted a chart showing the murder rates in 11 capitals around the world in 2024.
That ranked Delhi’s murder rate at the ninth spot, with only London and Madrid ahead of it, while Washington topped the chart with 27.64 homicides.
Islamabad ranked the fourth worst with a rate of 9.2 per 100,000 residents.
Having deployed the National Guard in Washington, Chicago is his next target.
“Chicago is a mess” and Chicagoans were “screaming” for help, President Trump said last week.
“So, I think Chicago will be our next federal deployment, and then we’ll help with New York”, he said.
The National Guard can be broadly compared to the Territorial Army, except it is organised on the basis of states and both the federal and state governments share control over them. They can be deployed in combat overseas as it happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The US Constitution or laws don’t have provisions for President’s Rule or federal intervention in states, and his plans have met stiff opposition from Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, and federal troops’ deployment will likely face court challenges.
“Action will be met with a response”, Pritzker warned. “We will not stand idly by if he decides to send the National Guard to intimidate Chicagoans,” he added.
Since Washington is a federal territory, President Trump had the powers for deployment of the National Guard, despite the opposition of Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Democrat-dominated City Council.
Bowser has since grudgingly acknowledged that crime rate has come down since the surge ordered by President Trump.
“We know that when carjackings go down, when use of guns goes down, when homicide or robbery go down, neighbourhoods feel safer and are safer, so this surge has been important to us”, she said on Wednesday.
There has been no homicide since the National Guard was deployed on August 11 in the city that saw 100 till that date from January 1.
President Trump has said that he wants the death penalty, which is on the federal law books, to be invoked in Washington and juveniles to be prosecuted as adults.
He is also pushing all the states and cities that have introduced cashless bail to rescind them by threatening to withhold federal funds.
President Trump has cast his battle along party lines saying that of the 25 cities with highest crime rates, all but a couple are run by Democrats.
Voters’ worry over crime was one of the factors that helped President Trump win the election.
Even though Democrats say crimes are falling, they are still high, and President Trump is hoping to capitalise on this.
One of the dilemmas for the Democrats is that most crime victims in cities are African Americans and Latinos — nearly 95 per cent of murder victims in Chicago, for example, are from those communities — and President Trump hopes to appeal to them.
In hard numbers, Chicago with a population of 2.75 million recorded 573 homicides, and 2,189 sex crimes last year according to the city.
Washington, which has a population of only 702,250, saw 187 homicides and 143 sex abuse cases last year, according to the city’s federal prosecutor’s office.
In contrast, Delhi with a population of 34 million had 504 murders and 2,076 crimes against women last year, according to police.