President Donald Trump, justifying his momentary federal takeover of policing in the nation’s capital, claimed at a press convention Monday that the violent crime scenario in Washington, DC, “is getting worse, not getting better.” He asserted in an govt order that “crime is out of control in the District of Columbia” and that there’s “rising violence in the capital.”
But violence in the capital is definitely falling. After a spike in 2023, violent crime declined in 2024 and has declined once more thus far in 2025.
Washington has been a comparatively high-crime place for decades, with a murder price that has persistently been among the many nation’s worst for giant cities – although the district has gotten markedly safer since the crack cocaine crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s. And Washington suffered a sharp enhance in violence in 2023, which included its highest number of homicides because the late Nineteen Nineties and a near-doubling of reported carjackings in comparison with the earlier 12 months.
Trump highlighted that 2023 spike on Monday. He didn’t acknowledge, although, that the pattern has since sharply reversed.
Crime knowledge professional Jeff Asher, co-founder of the agency AH Datalytics, wrote in a blog post Monday: “The bottom line is that violent crime in DC is currently declining and the city’s reported violent crime rate is more or less as low now as it has been since the 1960s. (Standard disclaimer that not all crimes are reported to police.) The city’s official violent crime rate in 2024 was the second lowest that has been reported since 1966.”
Adam Gelb, president and chief govt officer of the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice, which tracks urban crime, stated in a Monday assertion: “The numbers shift depending on what time period and what types of crime you examine. But overall there’s an unmistakable and large drop in violence since the summer of 2023, when there were peaks in homicide, gun assaults, robbery, and carjacking.”
Gelb additionally famous the district’s stage of violence is usually larger than common for his group’s pattern of US cities – and that its enchancment mirrors nationwide traits. Violent crime declined nationally in 2024, and early figures assembled by Asher and colleagues from tons of of legislation enforcement companies across the nation counsel it additionally declined this 12 months via May.
Trump appropriately famous on the Monday press convention that 2023 was a horrible 12 months for murders in Washington. The district of about 700,000 residents had 274 reported homicides, its highest figure since 1997.
But Trump was incorrect when he stated 2023 noticed the capital’s highest homicide price “probably ever.” Washington had much more homicides in the late Nineteen Eighties and early Nineteen Nineties, when it had a smaller population; it exceeded 470 homicides in each 1990 and 1991.
More pressingly, Trump didn’t point out Monday that the variety of homicides in Washington has fallen sharply since 2023. It fell 32% in 2024, to 187 homicides, and had fallen one other 12% in 2025 via Sunday, to a preliminary rely of 99 homicides.
Of course, one murder is just too many, and it’s a matter of perspective whether or not one chooses to concentrate on the startling variety of homicides or the decline in that quantity. But it’s simply not true that the quantity is getting worse. It’s additionally price noting that Washington’s 2024 variety of homicides, 187, was higher than its quantity in 2020, the final 12 months of Trump’s first presidency, when Washington had 198 homicides throughout a national spike amid the turmoil of early Covid-19 pandemic and a furor over race and policing.
Washington had higher numbers in each different 12 months of Trump’s first presidency and your complete eight-year Obama administration earlier than that.
Trump repeatedly invoked carjacking on the Monday press convention, precisely noting that a former staffer for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was victimized in an attempted carjacking earlier this month.
Washington has had a vital carjacking drawback in latest years. The variety of reported carjackings – lots of them dedicated by juvenile offenders – skyrocketed in 2023, to 959. That was nearly double the quantity in 2022 (485) and greater than six occasions the quantity in 2019 (152).
But as with homicide, the pattern reversed in 2024; the variety of reported carjackings plummeted to round 500. It has fallen again thus far in 2025, with 188 carjackings reported via Saturday – down from almost 300 via the identical level in 2024.
The 2025 quantity remains to be excessive, little question. But these numbers additionally undercut Trump’s declare that the scenario is worsening.
“Carjackings are still reported more frequently now than they were before Covid, but there has been a consistent drop for more than 18 months. The 16 carjackings reported in DC in July 2025 were the fewest reported in a month since May 2020 – before the surge – and represented an 87 percent drop from July 2023’s total,” Asher wrote Monday.
The union representing Washington law enforcement officials has alleged that the district pressure has intentionally manipulated the way it classifies some offenses to make the district’s crime image look higher than it’s. The White House promoted this allegation on Monday, asserting on social media that “they’re cooking the books.”
That declare has not been confirmed; Trump himself framed it extra gently, saying the administration would “look into that.” In April, Trump’s hand-picked interim US lawyer for the district, Ed Martin, unquestioningly cited Washington’s knowledge in a press release in which he credited the president’s management for the way “the District has seen a significant decline in violent crime” this 12 months.
And Asher famous to NCS that whereas it’s not attainable to definitively dismiss the union’s unproven allegation concerning the knowledge, a number of native statistics additionally counsel declining violence – comparable to ShotSpotter gunfire data; hospital data on accidents brought on by firearms; and the data on murder, the toughest crime to doubtlessly misclassify. “So either all those independent sources are lying or gun violence is falling fast in DC, matching national trends,” Asher stated.
Asher himself individually questioned a few of Washington’s publicly reported knowledge for 2024 and 2025 given the extent of its divergence from a few of the knowledge it has reported to the FBI, although he stated that the district’s typically high-quality public disclosure means he’s probably observing “a data reporting issue rather than an intentional misrepresentation.” But even along with his questions on a few of the district’s figures, which you’ll examine here, he wrote, “There’s still tons of evidence pointing to declining violent crime in DC in 2025, especially gun violence.” He added, “Even if we can’t say for certain from the publicly available data how far it’s falling, there’s no reason to suspect the overall trend being reported isn’t correct.”
Various different cities which have traditionally had excessive numbers of homicides, together with Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, Baltimore and Detroit, have additionally seen substantial declines in 2024, 2025 or each.