Dr. John Lott talked to Fox News about who benefits Trump’s federalization of policing in D.C.
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“You go 13 days without a homicide occurring, those homicides would have invariably been very heavily Black,” John Lott, founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, told Fox News Digital in a Wednesday phone interview. “And so those lives, you have Blacks who didn’t die, who otherwise would have died.”
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Lott published data in August focusing on Washington, D.C.’s 13-day run of zero homicides following Trump federalizing the city’s police department, deploying National Guard members to the streets, and unleashing federal law enforcement agencies to assist with arrests and crime sweeps of the city. There were no recorded homicides in the city beginning the afternoon of Aug. 13 through the early morning hours of Aug. 26, according to police data, with the streak ending when a 31-year-old man was fatally shot Aug. 26.
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Using the city’s homicide rate from the first seven months of 2025, Lott found there was a 0.37% probability of such a homicide-free streak occurring on its own. The figure is based on D.C. crime data that is currently under Department of Justice investigation for claims the police department manipulated crime data to publish more favorable stats.
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The streak of no homicides overwhelmingly benefits Black Americans, the data found. Between 2019 and 2021, Black victims accounted for 96% of all homicides in the District, the report found.
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“You have others that are there that are going out and claiming that Trump’s policies are racist. Who are the victims of these crimes?” Lott asked, referring to Democrat politicians who have rejected Trump’s plans to roll out similar crime crackdowns in other cities notorious for crime woes. . . .
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The zero homicide count during the 13-day August period follows the city experiencing a 16-day run of zero homicides between Feb. 24 to March 13. Lott noted, however, crimes typically increase in the summer months — when residents spend more time outdoors and the days are longer — compared to the winter months.
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“Homicides usually peak during the summer months, yet D.C. does not provide an accessible historical breakdown by month,” Lott reported of the data. “As a result, including unusually low months such as February and March in the totals for the first seven months of 2025 — or even in the full-year total for 2024 — artificially lowers those figures compared to the August period we are examining. If we had the data to adjust for this seasonal variation, the results would likely appear even more statistically significant.” . . .
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Chicago has long been a notoriously dangerous U.S. city, with summer weekends often resulting in dozens of shooting injuries and deaths. The homicide rate for the city in 2024, however, sat at about 17.4 homicides per 100,000 people, which is far lower than rates in more dangerous cities such as Memphis, Tennessee — which saw 40.6 homicides per 100,000 people in 2024.
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If the Trump administration is aiming to save the most lives, however, heading to Chicago before Memphis, Tennessee, would fulfill that goal, Lott explained.
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“Should you look at the murder rate or the number of lives to be saved? If saving most lives is the goal, in 2024, Chicago (recorded) 573 murders, Memphis 242,” Lott wrote in an X post comparing the two cities.
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There have been 1,914 total arrests in D.C. as of Sept. 5 since the crackdown began in August, including illegal immigrants, those with outstanding warrants, individuals carrying illegal firearms or drugs and other crimes.
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Lott said the operation will also have indirect benefits to D.C. residents, especially its poorest locals who have suffered with stores closing in recent years due to crime and costs of operating in a city rocked by crime.
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“Anybody who goes to a CVS or Walgreens knows everything’s behind plexiglass there,” he said. “You want to go and buy something, you have to wait for a clerk to come over, unlock the things for you and then stand next to you while you read the packages and try to figure out what you want to buy. Those are really huge costs that those businesses have to have. That means the products that you have are more expensive. So if you’re a poor person who lives in D.C., there, one of the stores that you may have frequented are going to be closed, so you may have to go farther to shop.”
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“The jobs that people had for working in those stores are lost,” he explained. “And the ones that stay in business, their prices go up. And so that means the poor people have to spend more of their money in order to go and buy anything there. So all those are bad things that are happening.”
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