NEW YORK (AP) - President-elect Donald Trump says Rahm Emanuel, Chicago’s mayor and President Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, should ask for federal assistance if he can’t bring down the city’s rising homicide tally.

The nation’s third-largest city had 762 homicides in 2016 - the most in two decades and more than the largest cities, New York and Los Angeles, combined. The Chicago Police Department says the city had 1,100 more shootings last year than in 2015.

Trump noted the spike in shooting deaths on Twitter, writing Monday: “If Mayor can’t do it he must ask for federal help!”

Emanuel’s spokesman Adam Collins responded in a statement saying that if the federal government really wants to help, it can fund summer jobs programs for at-risk youth and pass meaningful gun laws.

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