Is Trump right about Chicago's crime levels?

US President Donald Trump has called Chicago a "killing field", a "hell hole" and "the murder capital of the world" - and has said he will send in National Guard troops to "solve the crime problem fast".

This comes almost a month after he did the same in Washington DC, where he claimed crime was out of control, despite official figures showing it falling.

Democratic Governor of Illinois JB Pritzker has said Chicago does not need an intervention from the president.

"We have our job, which is to fight violent crime on the streets of our city, and by the way, we're succeeding," Pritzker said.

BBC Verify has looked into what the figures show about crime in Chicago and how it compares to other US cities.

Violent crime has been falling

There were about 540 violent crimes recorded per 100,000 people in Chicago in 2024, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

About 2.7 million people live in the city - making it the third largest in the US - and almost 10 million live in the wider metropolitan area.

Homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault are included in the FBI measure of violent crime.

Last year, Chicago's violent crime rate was down 11% on 2023 levels and roughly half what it was in the years leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic.

On this measure, the city ranked near the bottom of US cities with populations larger than 500,000 (29th out of 37), according to BBC Verify analysis of FBI data.

New York, Los Angeles and Washington DC had higher violent crime rates last year.

Memphis, Detroit and Baltimore had the highest rates - with more than 1,500 violent crimes per 100,000 people.

Chicago's Police Department (CPD) publishes separate crime figures.

It also recorded a drop in violent crime, announcing in August that offences had fallen by more than a fifth on the same period last year.

What about murders in Chicago?

Shortly after the US Labor Day holiday on 1 September, President Trump said on his Truth Social platform that "at least 54 people were shot in Chicago over the weekend, 8 people were killed".

These numbers were widely reported by multiple news outlets, including the BBC's partner CBS.

As of the end of August, preliminary data from the CPD shows 278 homicides so far this year, down by a nearly a third on the same period last year.

In 2024, the CPD recorded 591 homicides, a term which includes both murder and manslaughter.

The FBI has a lower number for last year of 461, which crime analyst Jeff Asher says is because the CPD has under-reported the number of homicides to the agency in recent years.

It was the highest number of homicides of any US city last year, recorded by the FBI.

Homicides in Chicago have fallen significantly since the 1990s, when more than 900 were reported in some years.

The homicide rate has been falling in recent years, according to FBI data.

Last year, there were about 17 homicides per 100,000 people, down from about 19 in 2023 and 23 the year before that.

How does the homicide rate compare to other US cities?

In terms of the homicide rate per 100,000 people, Chicago did not top the list last year.

BBC Verify analysis of FBI figures shows that Chicago ranked tenth out 37 US cities with a population of more than 500,000 people.

It would be seventh if the CPD's higher homicide figure was used.

In 2024, the city which came top of this ranking was Memphis (41 homicides per 100,000 people) followed by Baltimore (35 homicides per 100,000 people).

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker says efforts to tackle crime in Chicago are working

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has said: "Chicago has had the highest murder rate among US cities."

A White House press release stated that the city had the highest murder rate for seven consecutive years and linked to a study by the Rochester Institute of Technology research group.

The study does make this finding but its conclusion is based on a sample of just four US cities with populations larger than one million.

And, according to the same study, Chicago ranked 8th out of a bigger sample of 24 cities in terms of the homicide rate in both 2023 and 2024.

"There are different measures and analysts often focus on per capita rates as it's the most representative, but people's perceptions are informed by lots of other factors," says Adam Gelb from the Council on Criminal Justice, a legal think tank.

"This includes spikes and surges in crime, as when a number of incidents happen in a condensed period of time it matters to people's perceptions of the problem, in the same way a plane crash makes an impression compared with a series of car accidents."

The FBI cautions against using its crime statistics to create rankings.

The two crime analysts BBC Verify spoke to also warned against ranking cities.

"The best way to rank is to not do it because the way different city borders are drawn can make it very challenging to compare and not every agency reports crime data the same way each year," says Jeff Asher, the co-founder of a US-based data analytics firm.

"The White House has been comparing rates to other international cities with 30 million people - but when you compare to cities of that size crime doesn't scale up as it's often concentrated in certain areas - and internationally data is also collected very differently," he adds.

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