NEW ORLEANS — Violent crime in New Orleans declined for a third consecutive year in 2025, police officials announced Monday as National Guard troops began patrolling the city on President Donald Trump’s orders.
The police figures were released less than a week after armed troops arrived in New Orleans, part of a broader effort in multiple cities where Trump has deployed National Guard members on crime-fighting missions. The announcement also came as a separate immigration crackdown that began in December has deployed hundreds of federal agents in and around the city.
Local officials had pushed back for months against the possibility of a Guard mission, arguing that crime was already decreasing and that troops are not trained to arrest and jail people, much less investigate crimes and prosecute anyone. Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick said she supported the Guard’s presence as a deterrent, and told reporters, “The National Guard’s presence will certainly have impact,” adding, “We’re just grateful that crime is down, and I don’t care who gets the credit.”
Trump approved sending 350 National Guard members to Louisiana months after Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry requested a deployment to fight crime. Trump credited the Guard deployment with New Orleans’ drop in crime during a Saturday news conference, saying, “We have crime down to almost nothing already,” and adding, “I cannot imagine why governors would not want us to help.”
Landry has said troops were needed in New Orleans due to “elevated violent crime rates,” while local officials said crime has been dropping for years in the city. The police department’s violent crime data released Monday said murders, shootings, armed robberies and car jackings in New Orleans have decreased significantly since 2022, including a decline from 266 murders in 2022 to 121 in 2025.
The police department said its “murders” count refers to criminal homicides, including suspected homicides under investigation that have not yet been adjudicated, and excluding suspected suicides, accidental deaths and justifiable homicides. The department also said the 2025 figure included 14 people who were killed in a vehicle-ramming attack on Jan. 1 last year.
So far, National Guard troops have been confined 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 in other crime hot spots beyond the French Quarter, and said the deployment bolstered an understaffed 910-member city police force. “If they prevent a crime by their presence, I’m all for the safety of the city, as long as it’s constitutional and ethical,” she said.
New Orleans’ Democratic mayor-elect, Helena Moreno, initially opposed the National Guard deployment but later said she welcomes federal government support for city safety during major events in the Mardi Gras carnival season, which runs into February. A Landry spokesperson said the governor’s office did not yet have an answer for whether troops would be deployed beyond the French Quarter.
Jeff Asher, a former CIA crime analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics, said the drop in New Orleans mirrors an overall drop in major U.S. cities since the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re generally seeing a dramatic drop in overall crime pretty much everywhere across the country,” Asher said, adding, “Declines in New Orleans being no exception there.”
The AP story was first published on Jan. 5 and updated on Jan. 6 to delete an erroneous reference about cases of suspected manslaughter not being included in the city’s murder count; the police department said it does include such cases.