Red state governors in places like Mississippi and Louisiana are eagerly deploying national guard troops to Washington to assist with President Donald Trump’s alleged crackdown on crime. However, crime stats from Trump’s ally states show they might need to focus their forces back at home.
“There's a lot of talk. There's a lot of spin on this topic, but the numbers don't lie.,” said CNN senior reporter Marshall Cohen. “So, we took a very close look at the FBI Violent Crime statistics for last year.”
Cohen reports there are 2,000 National Guard troops in D.C. right now, with about half of them from the D.C. guard. The other half come from six states with Republican governors: Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana.
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“When we looked at the data, we found that there are actually 10 cities in these states that have a higher crime rate than D.C.,” Cohen reported. “Look at this: Cleveland, Toledo, Memphis, Tenn: They were No. 1 in the country last year [in violent crime.] Nashville, Charleston — the capital of West Virginia — and then two more down in Louisiana: Shreveport and Lafayette.”
“And by the way, Shreveport is the home district of House Speaker Mike Johnson, the top Republican in Congress,” Cohen added.
But if that already didn’t look bad, Cohen said it “gets worse.”
“Look at the murder rate,” Cohen said. “I want to compare the murder rate in Washington, D.C. to Jackson, Mississippi. Last year in D.C. there were 27 homicides per 100,000 residents. That's not good, but it's better than this: 77 last year in Jackson, Mississippi. They were No. 1 in the country.”
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Cohen said the numbers are giving critics fuel to hound Republican governor’s claims.
“It’s stats like these that are why social justice groups, criminal justice reform groups, Democratic lawmakers and Trump critics have argued that this whole deployment in D.C. is just a show. It's a pretext. It's not based on the data,” Cohen said. “If you really want to crack down on the most violent cities, you need to be looking elsewhere. That's the criticism.”
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