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BALTIMORE – President Donald Trump is eyeing Baltimore for his next crime crackdown, but while residents agree the city needs change, they remain divided over whether deploying the National Guard is the answer.
Fox News Digital spoke with 17 locals in Baltimore on Wednesday about what a National Guard deployment would mean for their community. While many worried it would raise tensions and inspire riots, others said the troops could serve as a crime deterrent.
When asked if Trump should step in and send troops to the city, Tasha, a young mother who was pushing her baby in a stroller outside the Department of Social Services, said, “Yes, I do, because right now our city needs it. Baltimore is on fire right now. We need as much help as we can get.”
Joseph, a Penn-North resident, said the National Guard’s presence would deter drug dealers and users from loitering on the streets around his home. There was a homeless woman sleeping on his front stoop while Fox News Digital spoke to him on Wednesday.
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“I think it would make it a lot better,” Joseph said.
Daren Muhammed, a local radio host who called Penn-North “ground zero,” said “all options should be placed on the table and made available” to clean up the streets he calls home.
“My feeling is if the federal government’s offering help, one’s foolish to turn it down,” Anthony, a Baltimore resident for 30 years, said.
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Every Penn-North resident who spoke to Fox News Digital on Wednesday recognized the city has a crime issue.
More than two dozen people were hospitalized in a mass drug overdose event in Penn-North in July. Meanwhile, three out of the seven homicides in Baltimore during August were in the nearby Park Heights, according to local reports.
Between people selling and using drugs on the corner as one police car was parked just down the street, Tasha said that in Penn-North, “everything is back out here running like it didn’t even happen a month ago.”
Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott celebrated “historic reductions in violent crime” in a statement released on Monday, touting 91 homicides and 218 nonfatal shootings in 2025, which he said are 29.5% and 21% drops.
“We’re good; we don’t need or want the National Guard here in Baltimore,” Scott said in response to Trump’s potential plans, while promoting a statistic that Baltimore is experiencing its lowest homicide rate in 50 years.
Gov. Wes Moore, D-Md., has reiterated the same stats and even invited Trump for a public safety walk through Baltimore.
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“As President, I would much prefer that he clean up this crime disaster before I go there for a walk,” Trump wrote back on Truth Social, as the president continues to signal his willingness to send troops.
Statistics compiled by the nonprofit research institute Just Facts show that Baltimore’s 2024 murder rate is still 6.8 times the average for all metropolitan areas in the nation and that if the murder rate stays the same as it was in 2024, roughly 1 in every 38 people in the city will have their lives cut short by murder at some point during the course of their lives.
“I don’t think they need to bring the troops in,” Sarah, who said she is homeless and an addict, told Fox News Digital. “I think that is going to get an uproar. It’s going to start a riot.”
Sarah said she has witnessed robberies, thefts and shootings but said it would be “absurd” to send the National Guard, adding, “We’re not in war zone.”
Trayvon, a young man from Baltimore who was hanging around outside the CVS Pharmacy in Penn-North on Wednesday, said the National Guard is “not going to change s–t” in a “rebellious city that ain’t been shown love in forever.”
“I think anyone who’s lived here through Freddie Gray, through a curfew, through almost having martial law in a certain kind of way, having the ramp closed off and locked off to come in after a certain hour, literally being blocked from it if you were on that side of town, with the Guard there and a couple of other different departments, I think psychologically it’s not probably best for people who probably still haven’t healed,” Baltimore local, Ashley, said in neighboring Bolton Hill.
Freddie Gray was a 25-year-old Black man from Baltimore who died in police custody in 2015. The National Guard was deployed to Baltimore after his death sparked protests that devolved into riots, igniting a national debate about racism and police brutality.
“The day when the people cannot control themselves and cannot police themselves will be the end of everything,” another woman from Baltimore said in Bolton Hill. “That’s what we are seeing right now. Nobody will save us – not the National Guard, not the police.”
Ronette, a woman who spoke to Fox News Digital while passing by the Department of Social Services in Penn-North, agreed, arguing that Baltimore can take care of itself.
“We don’t need Trump coming in the door,” she said.
Another Baltimore resident, George, said Trump threatening to deploy troops is merely a “stunt,” while a woman wearing a face mask outside her home in Bolton Hill said it would “raise tensions much higher than they already are.”
Will Hanna, a combat veteran from Baltimore, said the city needs federal help but not from the National Guard.
“I think there are some resources that we haven’t exhausted as a city and as a state,” Hanna said. “I think that we still can bring the state troopers here.”
Trump has floated the idea of sending federal troops to Baltimore, similar to his recent move to send troops to Washington, D.C., to “quickly clean up the crime” if Maryland Gov. Wes Moore says he needs help.
“Chicago is a hellhole right now, Baltimore is a hellhole right now,” Trump said earlier this month. “We have a right to do it because I have an obligation to do it to protect this country, and that includes Baltimore.”
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