WASHINGTON (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. The statistics have put Chicago at the center of a national dialogue about gun violence.

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

Emanuel’s spokesman Adam Collins responded with a carefully worded statement in which he says if the federal government really wants to help it can do things like fund summer jobs programs for at-risk youth and pass meaningful gun laws.