Make DC Safe Again

It’s time to make Washington, D.C., safe again. Washington is one of the most dangerous capital cities in the civilized world. Tourists, diplomats, members of Congress and their staffs, and residents—especially in minority neighborhoods—have all been victims of crime. 

If Washington, D.C., was a state, it would have the highest per capita homicide rate of any state in the United States.

It’s a disgrace. 

The United States of America should have one of the safest capitals, if not the safest, among Western democracies. But we don’t.

Residents of the city have become anesthetized to the violence. The Washington Post barely covers crime. Local media cover the constant drumbeat of armed carjackings and murders with less zeal than the weather and traffic.   

In a city that had over 25 million tourists last year from all around the world and received $10.2 billion in visitor revenue, you would think that driving down crime rates would be priority No. 1 for city leaders. 

But it’s not.

Washington, D.C., like a lot of major metropolitan cities, has “safe” areas to live and work, and “dangerous” areas. The city is shaped like a tiled square, the left half of which is the safe area. Residents who live and work on the right half—east of Rock Creek Parkway—live in a different reality. That segment of the city contains Wards  7 and 8, the most dangerous areas in the city.

And who suffers the most from violent crime in our city? 

It’s not the lawyers, lobbyists, corporate big shots, and other elites who live in Wards 2 or 3, which includes tony Chevy Chase, Spring Valley, Georgetown, and the folks who live west of Rock Creek Park. Their neighborhoods are, with some exceptions, relatively safe. They have three to five homicides a year.

Those parents don’t stress about their kids getting shot on the way to school or in a drive-by or being recruited into a gang. They don’t lie awake at night praying that their child makes it to 21 years of age. They fret about their kids’ SAT scores, their AP courses and grades, and college admissions.   

The people who suffer the most live east of Rock Creek Parkway, especially those who live and work in Anacostia. In 2023, in Wards 7 and 8, there were 154 homicides. In Ward 7 alone, there were seven times more motor vehicle thefts (1,262) than in Ward 3 (167), 11 times more assaults with a dangerous weapon (324 versus 29), and 10 times more robberies (679 versus 64).

The liberal elites who work for The Washington Post or cable news aren’t really affected by this crime because they live and work in the safe areas. 

The Trump administration and Congress have an opportunity to make D.C. safe again, as I outlined in my testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last fall. 

Before highlighting most the important thing President Donald Trump can do to make D.C. safe again, it is important to understand the D.C. crime scene.

Prosecution 101

The chief felony prosecutor for the District of Columbia is the D.C. United States attorney. That position is unique among the 92 other presidentially appointed federal prosecutors spread across the country because he wears two hats: He acts as the local district attorney handling local crime and the head federal prosecutor, handling federal crimes. All prosecutors in his office are assistant United States attorneys, but roughly 75% of them handle cases in the local D.C. Superior Court and are no different from any other large city deputy district attorney.    

The D.C. Office of the Attorney General is the city attorney’s office. The office is tasked with handling civil issues, traffic infractions, and juvenile crime, except in situations where the United States Attorney’s Office decides to prosecute violent juveniles as adults. 

Homicides, Carjackings, and Gun Crimes Galore

The crime statistics speak for themselves.

In 2023, 274 people were murdered in this tiny 68-square mile enclave, the most homicides in 20 years. 

Take a hard look at the homicide data taken from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department website.

In 2023, there were 1,412 assaults with a dangerous weapon, 3,468 robberies, 1,095 burglaries, 6,809 motor vehicle thefts, 7,795 thefts of property from autos, and a whopping 13,314 garden-variety thefts. 

And those are just the crimes reported to the police.

The real numbers are likely higher; potentially much higher.

Matt Graves, the current U.S. attorney, recently bragged that overall violent crime was down in 2024 by 15% in a last-ditch effort to rehabilitate his reputation and gloss over the fact that crime spiked dramatically under his watch.

The 187 homicides in 2024 were a 32% drop from the previous year, but that’s nothing to brag about, since the 274 homicides in 2023 were the highest death count in more than 20 years. 

During the Trump administration, there was an average of 160 homicides per year. During the eight years of the Obama administration, there was an average of 122 homicides per year. Shockingly, during the Biden administration, there was an average of 222 homicides per year, 100 more per year compared to the Obama administration. 

And when you consider that in 2024—the year Graves brags about—there were 1,026 assaults with a dangerous weapon, 5,139 motor vehicle thefts, and 1,001 burglaries, that’s a sad legacy. 

Carjackings Through the Roof

The city also has a major carjacking problem. The vast majority of carjackings are committed by 15-, 16-, and 17-year-old males, two-thirds of whom were armed, according to Metropolitan Police Department statistics. 

By law, 16- and 17-year-olds who commit certain violent crimes, including carjacking, can be prosecuted as an adult by the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office. 

Consider this: in the 10 years between Dec. 31, 2013, and Dec. 31, 2023, there were only 176 juveniles charged as adults in the D.C. Superior Court Criminal Division for violent felonies, according to a D.C. Sentencing Commission report on sentencing trends for juveniles. 

That is a stunningly low number, especially when you consider that just during the last two years of the Biden administration, 587 people were arrested for carjacking, 64% of whom (375) were juveniles. Seventy-five percent of those carjackings during that time frame involved the use of a firearm, according to the police department’s carjacking interactive database. 

The two juveniles prosecuted as adults for unarmed carjacking during that 10-year period received an average sentence of 84 months. There was one juvenile charged as an adult for armed carjacking during that time frame who received a sentence of 180 months.

In any other city with a violent juvenile crime problem like this, the district attorney prosecutes those violent armed juveniles as adults to keep the community safe. But not Matt Graves. Not in D.C. 

Graves’ Abysmal Record on Gun Crimes

Every week, the Metropolitan Police Department arrests felons in possession of a handgun and presents those cases to the United States Attorney’s Office. Felons are not allowed to carry firearms under the law. And violent felons in D.C. are caught carrying firearms every week. Virtually every single one of those cases could be prosecuted in federal district court under federal law 18 U.S.C. § 922(g).  

These are not hard cases to prove beyond a reasonable doubt: The defendant has a felony record or he doesn’t, and he either had possession of the firearm or he didn’t. 

According to the United States Sentencing Commission, in fiscal year 2023, 97.5% of individuals prosecuted across the country in federal district court under section 922(g) were sentenced to prison with an average sentence of 68 months. For those with long criminal records who were charged under the federal Armed Career Criminal Act, the average sentence was 203 months.

But instead of prosecuting career felons who carry guns in federal district court, where almost everyone convicted will receive a prison sentence, the U.S. Attorney’s Office processes those cases in the local D.C. Superior Court with full knowledge that only 1% of total arrests result in prison time. That number is based on an analysis by the D.C. Sentencing Commission for arrests between 2018 and 2022. 

One percent!

In 2018, during the Trump administration, 85% of those arrested for either carrying a pistol without a license or unlawful possession of a firearm were charged in the D.C. Superior Court. In 2022, under Graves, only 54% of carrying a pistol without a license and 56% of unlawful firearm possession arrests were charged in Superior Court.

Between 2018 and 2022, the Metropolitan Police Department made 5,558 arrests for carrying a pistol without a license. The D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office refused to charge 1,933 (34%) of those and closed another 1,213 cases (32%) without a conviction. Of the remaining cases, 1,564 resulted in a felony conviction, but only 97 of those who were convicted were sent to prison, representing 1% of total arrests. A stunning 57.7% of those convicted received probation from D.C. Superior Court judges. With those odds, no wonder criminals in D.C. don’t fear being caught with a gun.

The situation is almost as bad for unlawful possession of a firearm prosecutions. Of the 2,149 arrests between 2018 and 2022, 829 (38.6%)  weren’t charged, 517 (38.2%) were closed without a conviction, and only 592 resulted in a felony conviction, representing 27% of those arrested. Of those felony convictions, only 312 of the perpetrators were sentenced to prison, or 14.5% of all those arrested for unlawful possession. 

This is not a track record any career prosecutor should brag about. 

A 67% Declination Rate Is Pathetic

And Graves is not just going easy on armed criminals. He has been giving most criminals a pass, as the statistics below prove, while blaming the police, the city council, the appeals courts, or anyone else other than himself for his failure to do his job. 

For example, in 2023, the U.S. Attorney’s Office had an abysmal 67% declination rate, despite the fact that the office has 330 prosecutors—one for every 2,035 residents. The declination rate in 2015 under President Barack Obama was 31%. In 2019, under Trump, it was 48%. 

Compare those numbers to the San Diego District Attorney’s Office, which has a 22.6% declination rate for the past 20 years in over 500,000 cases. That office also has 330 prosecutors but serves a county with 3,276,208 residents—one prosecutor for every 9,927 residents of the county.  

Personnel Is Policy

In order to make D.C. safe again, Trump must appoint a law-and-order prosecutor who is willing to reform the U.S. Attorney’s Office and prosecute the most violent criminals, including 16- and 17-year-olds, to the fullest extent of the law. 

Reforming the office should start with hiring law-and-order prosecutors, not woke social justice warriors who see defendants as victims and the police as the enemy. 

The best large city prosecutors’ offices have professional investigators on staff who work with felony prosecutors to build and support their cases. The best offices, such as San Diego County and Riverside County District Attorney’s Offices in California have 120 and 126 district attorney investigators, respectively, or about one investigator for every two or three felony prosecutors.

Riverside County spends almost $40 million per year on investigators. In contrast, the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office currently has three investigators for the entire office, or one investigator for every 80-90 felony Superior Court prosecutor. That’s pathetic.

Additionally, Matt Graves closed what was known as the Community Prosecution Unit in his office for no reason whatsoever. Attorneys in that unit attended hundreds of community meetings each year as the public face of the office. They listened to residents, explained policies, and were ambassadors for the office. This must be reversed immediately, as the office needs to be seen as part of the community.

These and other commonsense practices utilized in other successful large city district attorney offices are keys to making D.C. safe again. 

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