.
Fox News Digital spoke with Crime Prevention Research Center founder John Lott, who said resistance to Trump’s anti-crime blitz echoes the defund the police movement since both narratives reject the idea that tougher consequences for criminals leads to fewer crimes.
.
“I think they’re the same type of argument. Maybe it’s a matter of degree in terms of the difference,” Lott said in a phone interview Wednesday. “But the notion is: Will higher arrest rates, higher conviction rates, longer prison sentences, will that make it riskier for criminals to commit crime and deter crime?
.
“You have people like Brandon Johnson, the mayor of Chicago, saying that prison doesn’t work, that that doesn’t deter crime. He just calls it racist to go and put people in jail for committing crimes.
.
“The attorney general for (Washington, D.C.) says that having more police is unneeded, and it’s unnecessary for that. And so they don’t see a connection between making it riskier for criminals to go and commit crime and the amount of crime that’s occurring,” he continued, explaining the similarities between the 2020 defund movement and 2025’s opposition to Trump’s anti-crime initiative.
.
Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign heavily focused on cleaning up crime-riddled cities after the violent wave of 2020 that left an excess of Americans dead as anti-police and Black Lives Matter protests and riots broke out in cities nationwide. . . .
.
Lott told Fox Digital that even if the federalization of D.C. ends Sept. 11, after the predetermined 30-day time period runs dry, the initiative will have lasting effects as many criminals have already been removed from the streets. There have been at least 1,669 arrests in D.C. since the federal crackdown began.
.
“It’s a mystery to me how Democrats can take that side of that issue, given that even Mayor Bowser now is saying what a success it’s been,” Lott said. “But you do have some longer-lasting effects that will be there, and one of them is the fact that you’ve already arrested and taken off the street a lot of these criminals. You’ve also arrested and caught, you know, a lot of illegal aliens that were there committing crimes.
.
“I assume some of the illegals have moved out of the area, because it’s no longer effectively, or at least for a period of time, been a sanctuary area,” he said. “Now, whether some of them move back again when these, if these policies are allowed to change back, I don’t know. But at least you’re going to have some longer run impact from from this, even if, even if it were to end” Sept. 11.
.
