OAN Staff Katherine Mosack and Brooke Mallory
2:10 PM – Wednesday, August 20, 2025
Washington, D.C.’s crime rate, including homicides and robberies, surpasses those of many U.S. cites and states, according to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Last week, John R. Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), released an analysis of the most recent FBI crime statistics, revealing strikingly elevated figures.
The August 13th CPRC report highlights:
- Violent Crime: D.C.’s violent crime rate is 54% higher than New Mexico’s, the highest state rate, and 220% higher than the national average.
- Murder: The District’s murder rate is 169% higher than Louisiana’s, the highest state rate, and 523% higher than the national average.
- Rape: While D.C.’s rape rate is 67% lower than Alaska’s, the highest state rate, it is 191% higher than the national average.
- Robbery: D.C.’s robbery rate is 370% higher than Maryland’s, the highest state rate, and 955% higher than the national average.
- Aggravated Assault: The aggravated assault rate in D.C. is 25% lower than New Mexico’s, the highest state rate, but 140% higher than the national average.
- Property Crime: D.C.’s property crime rate is 49% higher than New Mexico’s, the highest state rate, and 134% higher than the national average.
However, Lott provided caveats to the reported data, stating that the reported numbers may be inaccurate, as he noted that crime is “severely underreported” in the nation’s capital.
Crime underreporting in Washington, D.C., happens for a combination of reasons. Some D.C. residents distrust the police due to their own perceived past experiences of misconduct, harassment, or bias. This distrust discourages victims from reporting crimes, especially for sensitive offenses like domestic violence or sexual assault. In neighborhoods with high levels of violent crime or gang activity, victims may also fear retaliation if they report crimes to authorities.
Violent crimes, particularly sexual assault and domestic violence, are the most underreported. Fear, distrust, and social stigma are consistent factors across crime types. Additionally, even when property crimes are formally reported more often, minor thefts and vandalism still go unreported if victims believe the effort outweighs the benefit.
The study author emphasized that national crime statistics only capture a fraction of wrongdoing since only around 40% of violent crimes and 30% of property crimes are typically reported, and where there’s less confidence in law enforcement, including D.C., the percentage can be even lower.
A 2022 survey by the D.C. Policy Center and local universities found that less than half of residents in certain D.C. wards felt the police “can be trusted to protect them.”
However, even without the notion of underreported data, the comparisons made between D.C. and the states with the highest crime rates are still shocking in every category, the author notes.
Later in the piece, Lott highlights the hypocrisy of the left’s outrage in response to the Trump administration’s handling of the D.C. crime crisis. He specifically mentioned MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s admission that Democrats will privately discuss the crime problem in D.C., and that the president’s office should have acted years ago, while publicly attacking Trump.
“So many people have been calling me over the past couple days going, ‘You know Washington should have gotten involved years ago. This place is dangerous, it is a mess, it is a wreck,’ and whatever. But then they will go on Twitter and ‘this is the worst outrage of all time,’” Scarborough said on MSNBC.
The White House also posted its own fact sheet last week about the “out of control” crime in D.C. The article highlights that D.C. had the fourth-highest homicide rate in the country in 2024, “nearly six times higher than New York City and also higher than Atlanta, Chicago, and Compton.”
“If Washington D.C. was a state, it would have the highest homicide rate of any state in the nation,” the article read.
In his piece for The Federalist, which expands on his findings, Lott also lauded Trump’s FBI directive and the deployment of the National Guard to D.C., noting that they “can make a real difference” and that “the initial crime data is promising.
In the first week since Trump declared federal control over the Capitol, compared to the seven days prior, the police union reported robberies decreased by 46%, carjackings decreased by 83%, car thefts decreased by 21%, violent crime decreased by 22%, and assaults with a deadly weapon decreased by 6%.
“The evidence makes clear that Washington, D.C., faces one of the worst crime problems in the nation. This is true even if one ignores the claims that D.C. is manipulating its crime numbers and that the large gap between reported and total crime is likely larger for D.C.” Lott observed.
Vice President JD Vance visited National Guard soldiers at the Capitol on Wednesday, where he was bombarded by left-wing anti-Trump protesters calling to “free D.C.,” to which the VP responded that D.C. needs to be freed from “one of the highest murder rates in the entire world.”
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