A candidate for U.S. Senate, Mike Rogers, has asked Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan to request troops from President Trump.
Rogers cited a link from security.org that ranked Detroit second in the nation for violent crime in 2024. He represents White Lake, which is about 50 miles from the city of Detroit and is in a different county.
He cited President Trump's success reducing violent crime in Washington D.C. Rogers called to Make Detroit Safe Again.
“The numbers don’t lie: Detroit has become a hub for violent crime,” Rogers said in a news release. “And these aren’t just statistics–they’re people and families, whose lives have been flipped upside down because they aren’t even safe in their own community anymore. We have got to make our cities safe again. The Mayor of Detroit should be on the phone with the President now calling for backup.”
Mike Rogers is a former federal law enforcement officer.
City of Detroit Media Relations Director John Roach said that Rogers is "proving himself just another uninformed, grandstanding politician," Roach told Townhall in an email.
"In 2013, the City of Detroit had more than 750 carjackings. In 2025, we had 57 as of yesterday, a 90% reduction. Our strong partnership with US Attorney Jerome Gorgon has just added several more federal prosecutors to drive the violence down even further. The historic drop in Detroit crime in recent years has come from the efforts of serious law enforcement professionals, not from non-serious politicians like Rogers.”
Roach cited a January report that found Motor City recorded the fewest homicides since 1965.The city has recorded a drop in violent crime from 2024 to 2023, according to crime data.
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- Preliminary numbers show Detroit ended 2024 with 203 criminal homicides, down 19% from last year’s 57-year low and down 33% since 2022
- Non-fatal shootings down 25% in 2024, cut nearly in half from two years ago
- Carjackings down 16% in 2024, capping a 71% drop since 2015
- ShotStoppers 2024 success adds to success of multi-agency law enforcement partnerships
About 645,000 people call the city of Detroit home.
Trump has sent troops to reduce violent crime in Washington D.C. and he’s mentioned sending them to Chicago. However, the District is federal jurisdiction, while Detroit borders Canada.
“Chicago’s very interesting, because I watched them say ‘We don’t need help, we’re safe,’ but two weeks ago, they had six people murdered and they had 24 people hit by bullets,” he said. “Chicago is a hellhole right now.”
Trump has for weeks indicated he was considering Chicago as a future location for his crackdown on crime. His definitive indication Tuesday he would deploy the National Guard is an escalation of past statements.
“We’re going in. I didn’t say when. We’re going in,” he said.
Trump's administration has targeted Democratic-run cities with high crime rates. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a news conference last week.
She said that Chicago has had the most murders of any US city for 13 consecutive years.
“Clearly, Americans want to serve their communities, they just need a leader who encourages them to do so. Maybe Gov. Pritzker should spend less time demonizing the police, more time trying to recruit more police, and more time trying to call the President of The United States to get crime in his city under control. The President wants to allow law enforcement, whether it’s state, local, federal, to do their jobs, to arrest criminals, to put them behind bars, and to remove public safety threats from American communities, and he’ll continue to do that.”
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