It’s an incredible turnabout: the US homicide rate for 2025 is projected to be the lowest since 1900. Around 4.0 per 100,000 people, the largest single-year decline on record. Chicago is one of the big cities driving the reduction in homicides and other violent crime. That’s after President Trump ran in part on a promise to crackdown on criminals and the chaos they create. But Scott Thuman reports not all agree on just who should take a bow.

The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

Last November, on a local Chicago train, a 26-year-old woman is attacked by a man who doused her with gasoline and set her on fire. Bethany Magee survived but suffered life-threatening burns. Her alleged attacker, 50-year-old Lawrence Reed, now facing federal terrorism charges.

The unprovoked assault shocked the nation, and getting the attention of President Trump.

President Trump: They burned this beautiful woman, riding in a train.

Just weeks later, as crowds left a downtown Chicago Christmas tree lighting ceremony, a 14-year-old boy was killed, and eight other teenagers were wounded in two separate Friday night shootings.

But that headline-grabbing violence comes against a backdrop of a sharp reduction in crime reported in the city in 2025.

Homicides down 29% from the previous year, carjackings down 50%. Overall, violent crime down 21%

On the streets of Chicago, we found a mix of views but still concerns over crime.

Woman: I mean, I personally feel safe. I don’t walk home alone at night in the middle of the night. But I think that’s common for any area, right? I grew up in the suburbs. I’m not walking around alone in the suburbs. It gets really creepy.

Man: You got your good areas like anywhere else, you got your bad areas. But the West Side, it’s getting a little bit better, you know.

Community activist, Trump supporter, and candidate for the Republican nomination in her deep blue Chicago congressional district. P Rae Easley supported the Trump law enforcement surge in her hometown.

P Rae Easley: People will think twice about attacking people on the trains. Like the woman got set on fire. If a National Guard was on that train, he wouldn’t have poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. We deserve the safety and security that the Chicago Police Department obviously needs help providing.

Tom Weitzel spent 37 years in Illinois law enforcement, including 13 as chief of police in Riverside, a community just west of Chicago. He survived being shot in the line of duty and is frustrated that Chicago’s police department is understaffed by hundreds of officers and strained by political decisions.

Tom Weitzel: They’re not using the latest technology tools. They’re not using AI, for example, in the way it should be used. Street camera programs, license plate programs, because Illinois keeps passing this legislation to prevent police officers from using it, and the way it was intended. They passed a law to disband and dismantle the gang database for Chicago. So Chicago can’t use a gang database anymore.

Scott: Why aren’t they being used anymore?

Tom Weitzel: Quite simply, the state thought it was racist.

But his strongest criticism is for the state’s Safe-T Act, passed in 2021. While its aim to create a fairer justice system might be noble, Weitzel says it turned out to be soft on crime.

Tom Weitzel: It really gives criminals or offenders the ability to walk out the door after being arrested for serious crimes. That creates individuals that want to resist the police, want to flee from them, want to fight the police. And then when you get ’em in custody, they say, yeah, I’ll be out in a few minutes. And it may not be a few minutes, but they’re out in a few hours.

There’s one more twist to consider in Chicago’s crime story. Two competing factions are claiming credit for the reported crime reduction. The Trump administration, after the surge in federal law enforcement, and Mayor Johnson, who accused Trump of “attempting to take credit for our work driving down crimes and violence.”

But there’s reason to ask whether the stats reported in Chicago and other cities are real. In mid-December, the House Oversight Committee published an interim report on Washington DC. Finding police and city leaders there put pressure on commanders to manipulate crime data to make the nation’s capital appear safer.

After the unprovoked transit attack in Chicago on the woman who was badly burned, it emerged that Reed, the man now in custody, was previously arrested more than 70 times.

Tom Weitzel: And that has kind of changed the narrative. People that were supporting the safety Act and everything that it brought with it are starting to say, well, maybe we need to look at some changes.

Scott: You think that’s perhaps a wake-up?

Tom Weitzel: It is. So we don’t know how that’s going to end. But we do know that what happened to her has changed the public narrative in the Chicago area.

And may just change how crime is handled in America’s third-largest city.

For Full Measure, I’m Scott Thuman in Chicago.

Watch the video here.