When President Donald Trump announced a crime emergency in Washington, D.C., allowing him to federalize the police department and deploy federal law enforcement and the National Guard, critics said that violent crime in the city was falling and local authorities had it under control.

Well, it turns out that violent crime statistics had been falling from pandemic highs, although there were reasons for this, including how the city tracks violent crime (counting fewer crimes as violent than other cities do) and “cooking the books” to lower the statistics.

But then there was the curious case of Washington’s crime lab, and the fact that it lost its certifications in 2022 and still doesn’t have them all back. At the same time, prosecutions plummeted, with some ascribing the problems to the dysfunctional crime lab situation.

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