In the aftermath of a fatal stabbing of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte light rail train, President Donald Trump’s law-and-order agenda is once again at the center of America’s debate over the intersection of urban crime and race.
The killing of Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee who had fled the war — by a homeless Black man with schizophrenia and a long criminal record—has ignited a litany of political hot takes, social media outrage and renewed discussion about how Trump’s tough-on-crime approach, widely condemned as punitive by liberals, might actually be welcomed in some of the communities it affects most.
Last week, before the assassination of Charlie Kirk subsumed national coverage, surveillance footage of the unprovoked attack on Zarutska spread widely on social media and, eventually, the national media. Billionaire Elon Musk, known for wading into controversies involving race and crime, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller reposted details of the incident, accusing mainstream media outlets of ignoring the story.
On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the attack “entirely preventable,” blaming Brown’s release on “soft-on-crime policies” and singling out the judge involved for leniency.
The stabbing has since become a flashpoint for Trump’s broader campaign to federalize policing and crack down on violent crime—measures he claims are aimed at protecting communities most affected by violence, particularly Black Americans.
Trump and his supporters argue that a robust crackdown would benefit Black communities by reducing the violent crime that disproportionately affects many predominantly Black neighborhoods.
The Trump administration has pointed to what it views as early success in Washington, D.C., following a federal takeover of the city’s police department in August. Officials cite a 13-day stretch with zero homicides as proof of the strategy’s effectiveness — though it remains to be seen if the lull in violent crime will persist now that the 30-day federalization of the city’s police force has expired. On Friday, Trump said he would deploy the National Guard to Memphis, Tennessee, another majority Black and Democrat-run city also struggling with violent crime and disorder.
“I think it’s pretty obvious. In a city like D.C., the latest data shows that 96 percent of murder victims are Black. So if you go 13 days without a murder, you’re saving a lot of Black lives, disproportionately compared to other groups,” John Lott, founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, told Newsweek.
Based on Lott’s analysis, a successful crackdown in D.C.—or any major city with similar demographics—would, by statistical reality, disproportionately benefit Black residents.
“If murder stops in D.C., the people who benefit overwhelmingly are Black,” Lott said.
The same pattern holds nationally. For decades, gun violence has exacted a severe and unequal toll on Black communities, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries. Between 2019 and 2021, Black victims made up 96 percent of all homicides in Washington, D.C., according to crime data reviewed by Lott. In 2024, Black Americans—who comprised just 13.8 percent of the U.S. population—accounted for 52 percent of all murder victims.
That imbalance, Lott and other supporters argue, is why crackdowns on violent crime, however controversial, may deliver their most significant gains in the very communities critics worry they’ll harm. If the policies are effective in reducing violence, they say, the data suggests Black lives would be saved in greater numbers simply because Black Americans are more likely to be the victims.
“It’s clear that the lives being saved are overwhelmingly those of Black individuals,” said Lott, who advocates for expanding gun rights and argues that higher rates of lawful gun ownership reduce crime. “And if you look at the indirect victims of crime, Black communities are also disproportionately affected—businesses shut down, jobs disappear, and property values decline.”
Polling and community responses suggest that support for stronger policing is not limited to white conservatives. Many Black Americans in high-crime neighborhoods want more—not less—police presence. Gallup surveys from 2024 show that 64 percent of Black adults were satisfied with police-community relations, up from post-2020 lows.
“A lot of people focus on the fact that Blacks are arrested and convicted of violent crimes at high rates. What’s ignored is that 90 percent of Black murder victims are killed by other Blacks. If you make it easier on Black criminals, unintentionally, you’re making more Black people victims,” Lott said.
Figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics reinforce Lott’s point. Between 2017 and 2021, white victims reported white offenders in 8.7 million incidents, compared with 2.38 million involving Black offenders. Black victims also overwhelmingly reported Black offenders—1.88 million incidents—compared with 371,000 involving white offenders.
Blacks make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population, according to census data. Whites account for about 62 percent.
Critics Warn of Overreach
Trump’s tough-on-crime agenda has sparked sharp criticism from civil rights groups, Black activists, and community leaders who argue it will do more harm than good in communities of color.
“The president foreshadowed that if these heavy-handed tactics take root here, they will be rolled out to other majority-Black and Brown cities—like Chicago, Oakland, and Baltimore—across the country,” said Monica Hopkins, executive director of the ACLU’s D.C. chapter, before the president announced Memphis as his next target for the crackdown.
Their central concern is that Trump’s “law and order” approach will lead to over-enforcement, mass incarceration, and a rollback of civil rights protections in Black neighborhoods. Critics warn it could revive the “broken windows” policing of the 1990s, when widespread stop-and-frisk, zero-tolerance patrols, and pretextual stops led to thousands of low-level arrests in Black communities.
“These actions amount to the creation of a police state that would undermine the foundations of our multiracial democracy,” the NAACP Legal Defense Fund said in a statement issued in April, after Trump signed the executive order titled “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement.” The order instructs federal agencies to “aggressively police communities against all crimes,” opposes equity-based reforms, and expands access to military-grade equipment for local departments.
While the Trump administration argues that a tough crackdown is necessary to protect vulnerable communities—particularly Black neighborhoods plagued by violence—officials in Charlotte blamed systemic failures for why the killer of Zarutska was out on the streets despite a rap sheet that included 14 known arrests. In response to the outcry over the incident, Mayor Vi Lyles pointed to gaps in the city’s mental health and homelessness systems, framing the attack as a breakdown in social services rather than a failure of law enforcement.
That stance quickly drew backlash from conservatives, who saw it as emblematic of the leniency Trump’s agenda seeks to eliminate.
“We don’t need more ‘compassion’ for sick and twisted criminals,” said South Carolina Republican Representative Ralph Norman. “They need jail sentences—and this one needs the death penalty.”
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