As the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether to block President Donald Trump’s plans to deploy National Guard soldiers to Chicago, Trump’s attorneys are arguing that federal personnel are needed to prevent crime.
But an analysis of federal and state crime data by the Alaska Beacon, building upon a larger analysis by Stateline, shows almost all of Trump’s deployments have targeted cities with lower violent crime rates than Anchorage and other places in Alaska.
Among large American cities — those with 250,000 or more residents — Trump has ordered soldiers deployed to just one whose violent crime rate is among the 15 worst in the United States.
Anchorage’s 2024 violent crime rate, 1,015 per 100,000 residents, is the 15th worst in the United States, according to figures published by the FBI in an annual report.
Under the FBI’s definitions, violent crimes include murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
When considering Trump-targeted cities, only Memphis, Tennessee, which has a worst-in-the-nation 2024 violent crime rate of 2,501 per 100,000 residents, is worse than Anchorage.
Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Chicago all have lower crime rates than Anchorage.
They have the 19th, 32nd and 54th highest violent crime rates among large cities, respectively.
Statewide, the FBI tallied 5,392 violent crimes within Alaska in 2024, giving the state an overall violent crime rate of 728 crimes per 100,000 residents. That’s almost exactly the same rate as Los Angeles.
The Alaska Department of Public Safety has yet to publish its 2024 report on crime within the state of Alaska, but a spokesperson for the department said its report will mirror statistics already published by the FBI in its online data system.
Using those FBI-published statistics and population estimates published by the state of Alaska, Fairbanks had a violent crime rate of 730 per 100,000 residents in 2024, higher than Los Angeles or Chicago.
That applies only within city limits, because it’s based upon statistics reported by the Fairbanks Police Department, which operates within the city and not in the whole Fairbanks North Star Borough.
In Juneau, which has an almost identical population to Fairbanks city, the violent crime rate in 2024 was 519 per 100,000 residents.
The Bethel Police Department reported 104 violent crimes to the FBI in 2024, enough for that town’s violent crime rate to stand at 1,727 per 100,000 residents, slightly worse than Detroit, which had the third-highest violent crime rate in the nation in 2024.
Within the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the Wasilla Police Department reported 52 violent crimes in 2024, a rate of 541 — almost exactly Chicago’s rate. The Palmer Police Department tallied 10 violent crimes during the same time period, a rate of 169 per 100,000 residents, the lowest among Alaska towns and cities examined by the Beacon.
The North Slope Borough Police Department reported 63 violent crimes last year, a rate of 595 per 100,000. In Ketchikan, where the police department recorded 32 violent crimes, the rate was 418 per 100,000.
Spokespeople for Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy have repeatedly said that the governor has not requested a crime-fighting National Guard deployment for Alaska and has not approved the use of Alaska National Guardsmen for crime-fighting deployments in other states.
They reiterated those positions on Friday, a day when dozens of Alaska National Guardsmen were actively aiding in relief efforts following the arrival of Typhoon Halong in western Alaska.
Nationally, the state of Alaska has joined other Republican-led states in backing Trump’s claim that he has the legal authority to deploy the National Guard, even in cases when states and local governments oppose the deployment.
In September, Attorney General-designee Stephen Cox signed a brief alongside other Republican-led states in support of Trump’s ability to deploy the National Guard to Washington, D.C.
Alaska didn’t sign briefs in support of deployments to Los Angeles, Portland or Chicago.
Asked whether that absence represented a change in viewpoint or a nuance between the rights of states and the District of Columbia, Cox said no — it was simply a matter of timing.
“We have a process to review state amicus briefs and we receive dozens of requests every week, typically with several days to review them and make decisions, but on these two briefs,” he said, referring to ones related to Illinois, “we had less than 24 hours’ notice and not enough time. Had we had more time, we would’ve signed on.”
Meanwhile, former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles joined a bipartisan group of more than a dozen former state governors in arguing against the Trump administration’s deployment to Chicago.
In a friend-of-the-court brief, they wrote that allowing the federal government to deploy soldiers to states for police purposes violates the U.S. Constitution.
“The present deployment of military resources, based on an assertion of nearly unfettered federal authority, is unlawful,” they wrote.
James Brooks is a longtime Alaska reporter, having previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Kodiak Mirror and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. A graduate of Virginia Tech, he is married and has a daughter, owns a house in Juneau and has a small sled dog named Barley.
Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
