President Trump’s Justice Department is putting nearly $300 million behind a simple message that too many politicians abandoned years ago: Americans do not have to accept violent streets as normal.

Jacksonville, East Baton Rouge Parish, Jackson, and St. Louis have been selected for the Trump administration’s new Model Cities Initiative, a major federal investment designed to strengthen local law enforcement and drive down violent crime.

Each city submitted its own public-safety strategy. The money will be tied to the people, technology, forensic capacity, equipment, treatment, and reentry work needed to produce measurable results.

The Justice Department announced the four-city decision Friday:

The Justice Department says the selected jurisdictions are Jacksonville, Florida; East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana; Jackson, Mississippi; and St. Louis, Missouri. The funded departments are the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, Baton Rouge-East Baton Rouge Parish, the City of Jackson, and the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.

ADVERTISEMENT

The awards can support sworn officers and civilian personnel, better technology and equipment, expanded forensic capacity, prosecution and enforcement work, and services aimed at mental-health problems, substance abuse, and repeat offending.

DOJ will now work with each jurisdiction to finalize its public-safety plan. Attorney General Todd Blanche is also scheduled to visit all four locations next month to present the awards and meet with local law enforcement, elected officials, and community partners.

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward called the awards part of the mandate to restore law and order and make America safe again:

The Justice Department’s June Model Cities announcement shows how broad the initiative can be without losing its law-and-order focus. Eligible plans could include real-time crime centers, DNA and forensic tools, body cameras, license-plate readers, ballistic identification systems, officer training, victim services, gang intervention, correctional reentry, and technology upgrades.

The program also required city leaders to work together before asking Washington for money. Mayors, sheriffs, prosecutors, governing bodies, health officials, and community-supervision leaders had to back a single coordinated plan instead of building disconnected bureaucratic silos.

Taxpayers should not be funding another stack of vague promises. The goal is a local plan with named partners, a real budget, a timeline, and results the public can measure.

Attorney General Blanche confirmed the recipients and thanked President Trump for making the initiative possible:

The announcement lands as new federal data point in the right direction.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that the rate of violent crime excluding simple assault fell 25 percent from 2024 to 2025, dropping from 9.9 to 7.4 victimizations per 1,000 people age 12 or older. The preliminary report also found a 19 percent decline in the property-victimization rate, from 138.0 to 111.2 per 1,000 households.

ADVERTISEMENT

BJS cautions that the 2025 estimates are preliminary and come from its redesigned National Crime Victimization Survey. Even with that important qualification, the direction is unmistakable: serious violence and property victimization both moved sharply lower.

President Trump ran on restoring order, backing law enforcement, and refusing to tell families that fear is simply the price of living in an American city. These awards put real money behind that promise while demanding that local officials build plans capable of showing real results.

Now the four cities have to deliver. If they do, the Model Cities Initiative can become a blueprint for public safety instead of another federal program that disappears into paperwork.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

Join The Conversation. Leave a Comment.