WASHINGTON -The White House is pointing to newly released FBI data showing a record decline in violent crime as evidence of a "Trump effect," but the bureau's own figures show the drop began well before the president returned to office, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

The FBI's Uniform Crime Report, released Friday, found that violent crime fell an estimated 9.3% from 2024 to 2025 and that murder and nonnegligent manslaughter dropped 18.1%. Both are the largest year-to-year declines since the bureau began producing the estimates in 1936. The murder rate fell to 4.1 per 100,000 people, tying 1955 and 1956 for the lowest on record, according to UPI.

Robbery offenses fell an estimated 18.5%, rape 7.6% and aggravated assault 7.2%. The report draws on voluntary submissions from more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies covering about 96% of the U.S. population.

Trump announced the figures Friday at the Nassau County Police Academy in Garden City, N.Y., appearing alongside Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel. He said the country had achieved the single largest reduction in violent crime in American history and tied the decline to his administration's immigration crackdown.

Criminologists have been more cautious. Violent crime has fallen every year since spiking in 2022, during the coronavirus pandemic, and the trend has held across cities run by both parties. Adam Gelb, chief executive of the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice, said the homicide decline is historic but that its cause is about as clear as "a glass of milk," in an assessment his group released Thursday.

Jeff Asher, co-founder of the data firm AH Datalytics, said the release confirms that crime is falling at or near a historic pace and that data for 2026 points to another large decline.

One category moved the other way. Reported assaults on law enforcement officers reached a 10-year high, with 90,178 officers assaulted in the line of duty, CBS News reported. It is not clear whether the increase is connected to the administration's expanded enforcement operations.

The Long Island event carried a political charge. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the Republican challenging Gov. Kathy Hochul in November, appeared with the president.