Violent crime fell in 2025 for a third straight year in New Orleans, where Guard troops now patrol

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Violent crime in New Orleans declined for a third consecutive year in 2025, police officials announced Monday as National Guard troops begin patrolling the city on President Donald Trump’s orders.

The crime figures were released less than a week after armed troops arrived in New Orleans, becoming the latest city where Trump has deployed National Guard members on crime-fighting missions. A separate immigration crackdown that began in December has also deployed hundreds of federal agents in and around the city.

Local officials pushed back for months against the possibility of a Guard mission in New Orleans, pointing out that crime was already decreasing and that troops aren’t trained to arrest and jail people, much less investigate crimes and prosecute anyone. But Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick said she supported the troops’ presence as a deterrent.

“The National Guard’s presence will certainly have impact,” Kirkpatrick said. “We’re just grateful that crime is down, and I don’t care who gets the credit.”

Trump approved sending 350 National Guard members to Louisiana months after Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry requested a deployment to fight crime. Other cities where Trump has launched National Guard missions include Washington and Memphis, Tennessee.

During a Saturday news conference, Trump credited the Guard deployment with New Orleans’ drop in crime.

“We have crime down to almost nothing already,” Trump said. He added: “I cannot imagine why governors would not want us to help.”

Landry, a Republican, has said troops were needed in New Orleans due to “elevated violent crime rates” even though local officials said crime has been dropping for years in the city.

Since 2022, murders, shootings, armed robberies and car jackings in New Orleans have decreased significantly, according to violent crime data released Monday by the police. Although New Orleans was considered the country’s per-capita “murder capital” in 2022, with 266 murders, there were only 121 in 2025 — including 14 people who were killed in a vehicle-ramming attack on Jan. 1 last year.

By “murders,” the New Orleans Police Department is referring to criminal homicides, a department spokesperson said Monday. These include suspected homicides that are under investigation and haven’t yet been adjudicated, and excludes suspected suicides, accidental deaths, and justifiable homicides. Suspected manslaughter isn’t included in the murder count.

So far, the National Guard troops have been confined to the historic French Quarter, where troops were also deployed last year after the New Year’s Day attack.

Kirkpatrick said Monday that she would welcome Guard members in other crime hot spots beyond the French Quarter, adding that the deployment bolstered an understaffed 910-member city police force

“If they prevent a crime by their presence, I’m all for the safety of the city, as long as it’s constitutional and ethical,” she added.

New Orleans’ Democratic mayor-elect, Helena Moreno, initially opposed the National Guard deployment but has since said she welcomes the federal government’s support for the city’s safety during major events in the Mardi Gras carnival season, which runs into February.

A Landry spokesperson said the governor’s office did not yet have an answer for whether troops would be deployed beyond the French Quarter.

The drop in violent crime in New Orleans mirrors an overall drop in major U.S. cities since the COVID-19 pandemic, said former CIA crime analyst Jeff Asher, co-founder of the firm AH Datalytics.

“We’re generally seeing a dramatic drop in overall crime pretty much everywhere across the country,” Asher said. “Declines in New Orleans being no exception there.”

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Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

JACK BROOK