Faulty DC Crime Stats Say: Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes About Crime in our Nation’s Capital

Those complaining about President Donald Trump’s Washington, D.C. crime crackdown claim that crime isn’t as bad as it seems.

Even more unbelievably, they claim that violent crime in our nation’s capital is at a 30-year low.

In other words, they’re saying: Don’t believe your lying eyes. Crime isn’t as bad as it seems.

But a quick walk through downtown D.C. shows that isn’t true. And it especially isn’t true in some of the hardest-hit, most violent neighborhoods in the city.

So where did this unbelievable statistic come from?

It turns out the Biden Justice Department published it shortly before leaving office. And two important pieces of information help add context.

First, questions loom as to whether D.C. officials have been accurately reporting their crime statistics.

Recently, the Metropolitan Police Department (D.C.’s local police force) placed a commander on leave to investigate whether he had been falsifying crime data.  And representatives from D.C.’s police union alleged that commanders and other senior officers often showed up at violent crime scenes to order officers to categorize and report crimes as less serious.

Voila! A lower reported violent crime rate appears. Something similar recently happened in Oakland, California.

Second, even if some violent crimes might be down from the record highs of the past several years, they’re still much higher than they were 5-10 years ago.

Consider, for example, carjackings in Washington, D.C. As the White House noted, in 2018, D.C. experienced 148 carjackings. In 2023, that number skyrocketed to 957—almost 1,000—carjackings. While 2024 statistics (for which some skepticism is warranted) show a drastic decrease to only497—almost 500—carjackings, that is still more than triple the number of carjackings experienced in 2018. Hardly a 30-year low.

Another expert explained that the murder rate in D.C. “is currently 83% higher than it was at its low point a dozen years ago”—and it’s “five times the U.S. average.”

The Council on Criminal Justice also released a report showing that even if some violent crimes mightbe down in recent years, “the possibility of dying during such a crime has skyrocketed.” As one recent commentary on the report explained, “Lethality in D.C. jumped by a whopping 341% when compared to 2012 data. . . .”

All that doesn’t even account for the fact that a lot of crime in the district has likely gone unreported over the past several years. With victims justifiably questioning whether arrests or prosecutions will result, there’s little incentive to draw out the process.

Both the Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney for D.C. and the locally elected D.C. Attorney General took soft-on-crime approaches to prosecution. In the latter’s case, this has exacerbated the exploding juvenile crime problem in our nation’s capital.

While the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia has primary authority to prosecute almost all crimes that occur within the district, the D.C. Attorney General has primary authority to prosecute juvenile offenders. 

Sadly, he’s said that he will never prosecute a juvenile as an adult, no matter how old they are or how violent their crime. He said that he doesn’t “think kids should be treated as adults” because in his view, “Kids are kids.”  Moreover, he’s said that he doesn’t believe D.C. can prosecute its way out of the current crime crisis.

That, of course, is nonsense. But instead, he’s focused on performative lawsuits that he likely doesn’t even have the standing (or legal ability) to pursue.

At the end of the day, Americans know that their eyes aren’t lying and that crime is as bad—or worse—in our nation’s capital than many on the Left are willing to admit. Fortunately, Trump and his administration are taking commonsense actions to prevent and correct it.

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