'Instilling more fear': Locals say Trump admin effort to fight crime has already backfired

The GOP's crime crackdown has been criticised by those living in communities the Trump administration targeted most of all.

According to an ANC commissioner for Washington's Kingman Park area, Ebony Payne, the tough attitude towards crime from the president's administration has caused more problems than it has solved. Speaking to NOTUS, Payne believes there is a desire from locals to live in a "safe community" but that the Trump administration has done very little to affect this positively.

She said, "The surge just felt more like making an example out of our city, really, than intending to genuinely help with crime. Neighbors definitely want to live in a safe community. Everybody wants that. … But it has felt more focused on immigration, which is kind of tearing families apart and just instilling more fear."

"So, how much has it actually helped with driving down crime? You know, I’m not sure if it’s really had that much of an impact." Worries over crime spikes come as Trump claimed on November 17 that there is "no crime in D.C. anymore," and D.C. was a mess."

Violet Jira, writing in NOTUS, refuted this claim. They explained, "On the same day [November 17], seven violent crimes and 132 property crimes were reported across seven of the city’s eight wards, according to Washington Metropolitan Police Department crime data."

While the Trump administration has claimed a "clear victory" in tackling crime given there are "sharp declines" in overall lawlessness, data analytics expert Jeff Asher says it's not as straightforward as the Trump administration claims.

He said, "We’re generally seeing sharp declines in crime, we’re seeing sharp declines in gun violence. We’re seeing sharp declines in murder, and we happen to be seeing those same trends in all the available D.C. data."

"So it makes it very difficult, I think, to tease out whether or not a specific intervention in a specific city had any effect." Payne believes the administration has failed to effectively crack down on crime, instead deploying ICE enforcement in various parts of the country to crack down on immigration.

Payne said, "There’s been a lot of frustration because there has been so much emphasis put on ICE enforcement, when that wasn’t ever really the type of crime that the neighbors cared about."

"It took me a while to realize that what they really meant by cracking down on crime was really just cracking down on immigrants. What the city really needed was more attention on youth crime and solutions for youth."