In a powerful and great to hear post on X, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel described how his FBI has gone to war with violent crime and did a tremendous job starting to fix the problem over the course of 2025, though much remains to be done to fully fix the issue.
In the post, which was appropriately titled “Prioritizing Crushing Violent Crime,” the FBI director described how the FBI has surged resources to take repeat offenders off the street and tackle the gang problem, both of which efforts required a great deal of effort but will have cascading benefits in limiting future crimes.
Beginning the post, he noted the top priorities of the FBI, saying, “In 2025, the FBI elevated violent crime as a top investigative priority, realigning resources, surge capabilities, and enterprise coordination to focus on the threats posing the greatest risk to public safety – including violent gangs, firearms trafficking, and repeat violent offenders.”
Continuing, he noted that the FBI division most responsible for tackling the issue had done a great job getting a grip on it, saying, “The CID Violent Crime Section (VCS) led the charge with multiple tremendously successful operations across the country.”
Giving some examples of that, he went on to explain, “‘Operation No Escape’ for example saw the arrest of nearly 800 fugitives, ‘Project Welcome Home’ allowed state and local partners to bring 30 violent fugitives to justice, and VCS assisted in coordinating captures of FOUR of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. This is the same number captured during the entirety of the previous four years.”
Further, he described how various surges into crime hot spots allowed mass arrests of thousands of violent criminals, explaining, “VCS also led various surges across the nation, focused on driving coordinated action with external partners. These operations included Summer Heat led by @FBIDDBongino (over 8,500 arrests in 3 months), Coast to Coast, and Immigration Enforcement – all which highlighted joint investigative efforts between the FBI, HSI, and ERO partners. And local law enforcement partnerships are the cornerstone of our successful everyday police work.”
And, noting how the FBI is working on quickly hearing reports from the field and working the lessons from them into its operations generally, he explained, “We also set up the Violent Crime Working Group (VCWG) to provide senior leadership with unfiltered, frontline insight into the operational challenges faced by agents combating violent crime – bringing us the field-driven solutions Washington DC needs.”
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Then, concluding by describing the overall success of the massive effort and the various metrics by which that success is being tracked, the FBI Director explained, “In all, these surges and regional-focused ops helped lead to a record year for this FBI: -Over 50,000 arrests -30,000+ violent crime arrests – nearly DOUBLE the number from 2024 -1,800 gangs and criminal enterprises disrupted (210% increase) -2,000+ kilos of Fentanyl seized (up 31%), enough to kill 130 million Americans -Nihilistic Violent Extremism arrests up 490% -Over 6,000 child victims located (up 22%) -Historic drop in U.S. murder rate”.