Chicago resident Jedidiah Brown stated on Tuesday that people throughout his city live in “fear” of crime on a daily basis.
Brown told NewsNation that residents are not experiencing a supposed decrease in crime, but rather they fear being “kidnapped” or “hurt” by criminals on the streets. Democrat Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Democrat Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson have both insisted that crime is dropping in Chicago as President Donald Trump has floated the idea of deploying the National Guard.
“My children can’t walk around the community without fear of being hurt or kidnapped or having a drive by. So what these numbers that they’re expressing, we don’t feel it in our quality of life,” Brown said.
WATCH:
President Donald Trump said on Friday that he is eyeing Chicago as the next city to crackdown on once he is finished cleaning up Washington, D.C. Since Aug. 7, over 1,000 arrests have been made in the nation’s capital as a result of Trump’s crackdown, including members of MS-13 and Tren de Agua.
The number of homicides in Chicago reached a 25-year high in 2021, and have remained significantly higher than the numbers recorded in the last decade, The Chicago Tribune reported. There have been 262 homicides in Chicago as of Aug. 26, which is 117 fewer incidents in comparison to 2024, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Aside from June 2014, no other single month of June has had fewer than 40 murders in Chicago since at least 1970, according to WTTW, a PBS affiliate.
Pritzker and Johnson said Trump would be violating the U.S. Constitution by deploying the National Guard to Chicago. Johnson repeatedly claimed that crime has significantly gone down and accused Trump of spreading misinformation about the city’s crime statistics.
Trump said on Friday that Chicago is a “mess” and stated that the residents are “screaming” for federal assistance.
“Chicago is a mess. You have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent, and we’ll straighten that one out probably next, that will be our next one after this, and it won’t even be tough. And the people in Chicago, Mr. Vice President, are screaming for us to come,” Trump said.
Pritzker took a video from one of the nicest parts of the city on Monday in an attempt to dispute that Chicago has a crime problem.
The governor and Johnson begged Trump during a press conference on Monday to not send the National Guard to Chicago. Pritzker argued that Trump is not “wanted” or “needed” in Chicago, while the mayor stated that residents do not want the president to “dictate” what they need.
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