As Trump said, is Washington’s crime really out of control?

President Donald Trump said he would deploy hundreds of National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. and was controlling his police department to fight crime.

In a press conference, he declared “Liberation Day” as the city and promised to “rescue the capital of our country from crime, bloodshed, bedding and dirty situations.”

But Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said the city “has a significant reduction in crime” and “is at a low level of violent crime for 30 years.”

The BBC verified the figures showing violent crimes in the capital and comparisons with other U.S. cities.

Trump’s executive order declares a “crime emergency in the District of Columbia” mentions “rising violence in the capital.” In his press conference, he repeatedly mentioned that crime was “out of control.”

However, violent crime peaked in 2023 and reached its lowest level in 30 years in 2024, according to crime data published by the Metropolitan Police in Washington, D.C. (MPDC).

They are continuing to decline, according to preliminary data for 2025.

Compared to the same point in 2024, violent crimes have generally fallen by 26% and robberies have fallen by 28%. According to MPDC.

Trump and the District of Columbia Police Union question the authenticity of the city police department’s crime figures.

The MPDC and the FBI report another major source of violent crime.

MPDC public data shows a 35% decline in 2024, while FBI data shows a 9% decline.

Therefore, these numbers agree that crime belongs to DC, but differs at this level of decline.

Adam Gelb, CEO of the Criminal Justice Committee (CCJ), the legal think tank, said the downward trend was “clear and big.”

“The numbers depend on the time of the crime you checked and the type of crime,” Mr Gelb said.

“But overall, violence has been clear and dramatically reduced since the summer of 2023, when there were peaks in homicide, shootings, robberies and carjacking.”

Trump also claimed that “the 2023 murders reached the highest rate ever in Washington, D.C. – adding that the number “just goes back 25 years.”

When we asked the White House about the source of the numbers, they said it was “the number provided by the FBI.”

According to FBI data, the homicide rate did reach about 40 per 100,000 residents in 2023, the highest rate in 20 years.

However, this is not the highest ever – it was significantly higher in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Homicide rate fell in 2024, down 12% this year from the same point last year, According to MPDC.

Research shows Compared with other major U.S. cities, capital has a higher than average homicide rate.

As of August 11, there have been 99 homicides in Washington, D.C. so far this year — including a 21-year-old congressional intern who died in Crossfire, a case mentioned in his press conference.

The president also mentioned a 19-year-old former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) who was injured in an attempted carjacking in the capital in early August.

Trump claims that over the past five years, “the number of carsjacking has more than tripled.”

So far this year, MPDC records 189 carjacking crimesdown from 300 in the same period last year.

According to CCJ, carjacking has risen significantly since 2020 and rose to 140 peaks per month in June 2023.

Since July 2025, the city’s curfew has taken effect for people under the age of 17 from 23:00 to 06:00.

Introduced Fighting juvenile crime – Carjacking included – usually soars in the summer.

Mr Gelb of CCJ told us: “The level of violence in the region is still higher than the average of thirty cities in our sample.”

He added: “Although its downward trend is consistent with what we are seeing in other big cities across the country.”

CCJ looked Crime rates in 30 major cities in the United States.

Its analysis shows that the homicide rate in the first half of this year (January to June 2025) fell by 19% compared to the same period last year.

In the CCJ’s research sample, this is slightly larger than the average decline in the city.

But if you take the first six months of 2025 and compare it to the same period in 2019 – it only showed a 3% drop in homicides before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Among the 30 cities in the study, the decrease in the same time frame was 14%.

Following Trump’s second term with weekly twists and weeks of North American correspondent Anthony Zurcher American politics continues to grow communication. British readers can Register here. Anyone outside the UK can Register here.