Sonja Sohn, the actress best known for playing Detective Kima Greggs on HBO’s “The Wire,” posted an Instagram video this week ridiculing President Donald Trump for claiming his administration is responsible for dropping crime rates in Baltimore and Chicago. Sohn, who lived in Baltimore for years after the show ended in 2008, said the real credit belongs somewhere else entirely: the grassroots workers and residents who have spent years doing the unglamorous work of violence prevention.
The 62-year-old actress, who has 212,000 Instagram followers, said in her video that she has worked in both Baltimore and Chicago and has seen firsthand who is actually driving down violence in those cities, according to The Baltimore Banner. Chicago has also experienced a decrease in violent crime, and Trump has claimed, per the New York Times, that the nation now has the best crime record in recorded history. Sohn’s pushback lands as Baltimore posted just seven homicides last month, according to the Banner’s reporting, continuing a decline that has made national headlines all on its own.
A City Sohn Knows From the Ground Up
Sohn’s critique isn’t coming from a celebrity with a passing interest in the city. She founded Rewired for Change, a Baltimore-based outreach program focused on rehabilitating at-risk youth who have committed crimes, and directed the 2017 HBO documentary “Baltimore Rising,” about the city in the aftermath of Freddie Gray’s death. She later had a recurring role on Showtime’s “The Chi” in 2018 and most recently starred in ABC’s police procedural “Will Trent,” but her Baltimore roots and years of hands-on anti-violence work are what give her comments weight beyond celebrity commentary.
Baltimore recorded 133 homicides last year, according to the City of Baltimore Mayor’s Office, a 31% single-year decline from 194 in 2024 and the city’s lowest annual homicide total in nearly 50 years. Official municipal data released in July showed Baltimore logged 50 homicides during the first six months of 2026, a 23.1% decrease from the same period the year before and the lowest mid-year total in the city’s recorded history. The Baltimore Police Department also reported seizing more than 1,000 illegal firearms, including 105 ghost guns, while its homicide clearance rate climbed from 54% in 2025 to 60% in the first half of 2026.
What the Research Actually Says
A June 2026 study by researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research and the University of Pennsylvania found that Baltimore’s targeted Group Violence Reduction Strategy directly drove a 60% reduction in citywide homicides between 2022 and 2025, without increasing overall arrest counts — the same academic study referenced in Hoodline’s earlier coverage of an elderly man found dead near Pulaski Highway. A separate July 2026 report from the Center for American Progress concluded that federal National Guard deployments under the Trump administration failed to reduce urban crime rates, noting that murder rates were already falling in targeted cities before federal troops ever arrived. Trump has threatened legal action against the think tank following the report’s release.
Nationally, FBI data released this month showed the U.S. murder rate fell 18.1% between 2024 and 2025, to 4.1 killings per 100,000 residents — the largest single-year violent crime drop in federal recording history and the nation’s lowest homicide rate since the mid-1950s, as reported by The Washington Post. Data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association and the Council on Criminal Justice, cited by the White House, showed homicides across major U.S. cities fell 17.2% in the first half of 2026 compared with a year earlier, while carjackings plummeted 47% nationwide over the same period.
A Long History of Friction Over Baltimore
The dispute over who deserves credit for the city’s turnaround carries an unusually charged history. In July 2019, Trump called Baltimore the worst in the USA and described the city’s 7th Congressional District, then represented by the late Rep. Elijah Cummings, as a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess where no human being would want to live. He visited Baltimore that year, a trip met with street protests, and then-Gov. Larry Hogan called Trump’s comments about the city outrageous and inappropriate.
That history is part of why Sohn’s comments have resonated with some Baltimore residents watching the political fight over the city’s recent gains play out from a distance. Her message, as detailed by the Banner, was straightforward: the people doing the work of pulling Baltimore’s homicide numbers to their lowest levels in decades are the same grassroots workers and residents who have always been doing it — not a White House claiming credit from afar.
