In sending military to DC, Trump uses strategy that led to El Salvador's drastic drop in murders

President Donald Trump’s crackdown on crime in the nation’s capital netted dramatic early results: an historic lapse in murders and a marked fall in carjackings. But he’s not the only world leader pressing a tough-on-crime approach to restore law and order in troubled cities. 

"Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson” recently traveled to El Salvador to investigate reports of a rapid transformation that appears nothing short of extraordinary.

The conversion began in 2019 with the election of President Nayib Bukele. The 37-year-old has led an unprecedented crackdown on gangs and brutal violence that had made El Salvador the “Murder Capital of the World." 

 The strategy involved Bukele asking Rene Merino Monroy to head up the military as defense minister and tasking him with something that had never been done before: deploying soldiers along with police to round up tens of thousands of alleged gang members and other criminals. 

"What kind of difference has that made?” I asked Monroy as we walked the streets of a formerly dangerous Salvadoran neighborhood.

“If the police have 20,000 people, you can have 20,000 police in the street. But if you have 20,000 police plus 20 [thousand] militaries, you have 40,000 guys in the street. So that is the difference,” he told me. 

More than 87,000 gang members and other suspected criminals were rounded up and arrested in a relatively short period of time.  

The difference has led to remarkable success. 

In 2015, El Salvador recorded 6,656 homicides. But after the mass arrests, the numbers plummeted. Seven months into this year, there had been about 40 murders. The homicide rate dropped from more than 106 per 100,000 people to below 1 per 100,000 projected for 2025.

After six years, Bukele enjoys approval ratings above 90%, giving him the highest domestic approval of any head of state in the world. Other countries grappling with crime are studying El Salvador’s model.

For more on this story, watch "Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson” Sunday. Attkisson's most recent book is "Follow the $cience: How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails."