President Donald Trump has announced that he will send hundreds of National Guard troops to Washington, DC, and take control of the city’s police department to stop crime.
However, Washington, DC’s Mayor Muriel Bowser said the city has actually seen a big drop in crime and that violent crime is at its lowest level in 30 years.
The BBC said it looked into the crime numbers in the city and how Washington compares to other US cities.
Trump issued an executive order declaring a “crime emergency” in Washington, DC. He said crime in the city is “out of control” and is rising. But the crime data from the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPDC) shows a different story.
Washington DC Police Revealed Crime is on a Downward Spiral Since 2023
Violent crime in DC rose to a peak in 2023 but has been falling since then. Early data for 2024 and 2025 show that violent crime is at its lowest in 30 years and continues to drop. According to MPDC, violent crime overall is down 26% this year compared to last year, and robbery is down 28%.
Trump and the DC Police Union have questioned these official crime numbers, saying they don’t tell the full story.
Different agencies report crime data in different ways. The MPDC’s public data showed a 35% drop in violent crime in 2024, but FBI data showed only a 9% drop. Even though the exact numbers differ, both agree that crime is decreasing in the city.
Experts Say ‘Unmistakable’ Dip in Crimes in Washington DC
Adam Gelb, CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, said the drop in violence is “unmistakable and large.” He explained that numbers can change depending on which crimes or time periods are looked at, but overall crime has gone down a lot since mid-2023, when there were spikes in homicides, gun assaults, robberies, and carjackings.
Trump also claimed that murders in 2023 were the highest ever recorded in Washington, DC, but officials said the data only goes back 25 years. FBI data shows the homicide rate did rise to about 40 murders per 100,000 people in 2023, the highest in 20 years, but it was much higher in the 1990s and early 2000s.
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