FBI Deputy Director Raia on Violent Crime Strategy and Falling Crime Rates
September 29, 2026 · FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation · 0:01:15
Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube
What happened
FBI Deputy Director Christopher Raia said in the FBI podcast clip that national figures show historic declines in violent crime — roughly 10 percent overall, he said, and close to 20 percent in the murder rate across the country. He credited state, local, and federal partners, and what he called the Bureau’s intense focus on the violent-crime mission.
Raia described the strategy as working complex criminal cases and, in his phrase, striking the heads of the snake. Drawing on his time as a gang agent in Houston, Texas, he recounted a case in the small community of Freeport where agents arrested the 10 most violent criminals in a mass drug-conspiracy and VICAR case; a year later, he said, violent crime in that community had fallen 50 percent, even though more than 20 violent offenders had been operating there.
He presented that result as the model for how the focus set by the FBI director and the President drives the national numbers down: identify and remove the most violent offenders in a community, and crime falls sharply.
Why it matters
The clip is the FBI leadership’s own explanation of its violent-crime model — concentrated enforcement against top offenders — and the results it says that model is producing nationally.
Scoreboard watch
Raia cited roughly 10 percent overall and roughly 20 percent murder-rate declines nationally; those figures are checkable against the FBI’s published crime data releases.
Sources: FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Deputy Director Raia Speaks about FBI strategies to crush violent crime”, 2026-09-29 (official upload, embedded above; published 2026-09-29). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.
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