Violent crimes decreased in 2025 for the third year in a row in New Orleans. That was before the National Guard began patrolling

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Violent crime in New Orleans fell for the third straight year in 2025, police officials announced Monday as National Guard troops began patrolling the city on orders from President Donald Trump.

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

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Local officials have for months opposed the possibility of sending the Guard to New Orleans, noting that crime is already declining and that the forces are not trained to arrest and jail people, let alone investigate crimes and prosecute anyone. But Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick said she supports the presence of troops as a deterrent.

“The presence of the National Guard will certainly have an impact,” Kirkpatrick said. “We’re grateful for the decline in crime rates, and I don’t care who gets the credit.”

Trump agreed to send 350 National Guard members to Louisiana months after Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry requested they be deployed to fight crime. Other cities where Trump has launched National Guard missions include Washington and Memphis, Tennessee.

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During a press conference on Saturday, Trump credited the Guard’s deployment with a drop in crime rates in New Orleans.

“Our crime rate has dropped to almost zero,” Trump said. He added: “I can’t imagine why state governors don’t want to help us.”

Landry, a Republican, said troops are needed in New Orleans because of “high rates of violent crime” even though local officials have said crime has been declining for years in the city.

Since 2022, homicides, shootings, armed robberies and carjackings in New Orleans have declined significantly, according to violent crime data released by police on Monday. Although New Orleans was considered the nation’s “murder capital” per capita in 2022, with 266 homicides, there were only 121 homicides in 2025 — including 14 people killed in a hit-and-run attack on Jan. 1 of last year.

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By “homicides,” the New Orleans Police Department refers to criminal homicides, a department spokesman said Monday. These cases include suspected homicides that are under investigation and have not yet been adjudicated, and exclude suspected suicides, accidental deaths, and justified homicides. Manslaughter is not included in the number of homicides.

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

Kirkpatrick said Monday she would welcome Guard members to other crime hot spots outside the French Quarter, adding that the deployment bolstered the city’s understaffed 910-member police force.

She added: “If they prevent a crime with their presence, then I support the safety of the city as long as that is constitutional and moral.”

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

A spokesman for Landry said the governor’s office does not yet have an answer on whether troops will be deployed outside the French Quarter.

Jeff Asher, a former CIA crime analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics, said the decline in violent crime in New Orleans mirrors a general decline in major American cities since the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We’re generally seeing a significant decrease in overall crime almost everywhere across the country,” Asher said. “The declines in New Orleans are no exception there.”