- Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Monday said sending the National Guard to Detroit in order to deter crime is ‘unwarranted’
- Her comment comes days after Vice President JD Vance said the Trump administration was ‘happy’ to send the Guard, but only if asked
- While Detroit’s violent crime rate has continued to fall in recent years, it still recorded a higher homicide rate in 2024 than many cities
LANSING — Michigan will not ask the Trump administration to send National Guard troops into Detroit, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Monday, rejecting calls from Republicans to do so in an effort to curb crime in the state’s largest city.
“I think those tactics are unwarranted and not something we’re going to be asking (for),” Whitmer told reporters during a Monday morning event at Kentwood’s Hamilton Early Childhood Center, as filmed by WWMT-TV.
The governor’s remarks came five days after Vice President JD Vance used a Howell speech to call out Whitmer by name and say the Trump administration would be “happy to send the National Guard to Detroit” if she asked.
Vance touted the recent deployment of armed troops in Washington, DC, and Memphis, Tennessee, “to take back American streets.”
While Detroit remains one of the more violent large cities in America, its violent crime rate has fallen in recent years. In 2024, the city recorded the lowest number of murders in nearly 60 years, a milestone marked by Mayor Mike Duggan and aided by Detroit’s smaller population.
Related:
- Michigan GOP governor candidates: We’d welcome National Guard in Detroit
- JD Vance in Michigan: Trump will send National Guard to Detroit if Gov. Gretchen Whitmer asks
- Why Trump isn’t sending troops to Detroit, yet
It’s not just murders that have declined, city spokesperson John Roach said last week following Vance’s speech — shootings and carjackings also fell to their lowest point since 1965, he said, crediting “Detroit’s law enforcement strategy.”
But even with the decreases, Detroit’s had more homicides (203) in 2024 than far bigger cities such as Dallas, which has twice as many people and had 20 fewer homicides. Detroit’s homicide rate of 32 per 100,000 people is higher than Chicago, which led US cities in total homicides (573.)
While Whitmer may be uninterested in having the National Guard in Detroit, a number of 2026 Republican gubernatorial candidates over the weekend said they would welcome the federal assistance if elected next year.
Three of the eight Republicans running— Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt of Porter Township, former House Speaker Tom Leonard and former Attorney General Mike Cox — told Bridge during the Mackinac Island Republican Leadership Conference that Detroit’s high crime rates warranted the move.
“If I was the governor of the state of Michigan,” Leonard noted, “I would be taking the federal government up on whatever help they were willing to give us.”
This article first appeared on Bridge Michigan and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.