What do statistics show about violent crime in Washington DC?published at 17:10 British Summer Time
17:10 BST
President Trump has made repeated references to rising crime in Washington DC.
On Monday, he pledged to “rescue our nation’s capital from crime” and spoke of violent gangs prowling its streets.
Official crime statistics – published by Washington’s Metropolitan Police , external – show violent offences fell between 2023 and 2024, and are continuing to fall, according to preliminary data for 2025.
The data for this year to date suggests that robbery has fallen by more than a quarter and homicides by 12%, compared with the same time last year.
But there’s a difference in how crime figures are published by DC police and by the FBI. In 2024, for example, DC police data shows a 35% fall in violent crime while the FBI’s data shows a 9% drop.
So the figures agree that crime is falling in DC, but differ on the level of that decline.
Nationally, violent crime in the US fell 4.5% between 2023 and 2024, according to the latest FBI estimates, external. These figures only include crimes that are reported to the police.