While some far-left Democrats have admitted that President Trump did the right thing in federalizing Washington, D.C.’s, police and ordering the FBI and National Guard into the city to combat violent crime, the far-left, hate-Trump mainstream media quickly pounced on the crime data he used in announcing the move.
Violent crime in the nation’s capital, they say, is down almost 40 percent. But the media’s crime-fighting journalists don’t know — or did know and didn’t report — that the city fiddles with violent-crime data to exclude very violent crimes from their total.
Thus, violent crime in the city did not decrease 35 percent from 2023 to 2024, as it claims, and the media dutifully repeated. Rather, it’s dropped only 12 percent, the Daily Caller disclosed. Indeed, violent assaults jumped almost 15 percent, and since 2022, almost 40 percent.
As murders go, the city is still among the most dangerous nationally.
In an executive order published yesterday, Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to oversee law enforcement in the city, with Terry Cole, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, controlling the Metropolitan Police Department.
Trump also deployed FBI agents and 800 Guardsmen to patrol streets to help fight crime.
“The District of Columbia now has a higher violent crime, murder, and robbery rate than all 50 States, recording a homicide rate in 2024 of 27.54 per 100,000 residents,” the order says:
It also experienced the Nation’s highest vehicle theft rate with 842.4 thefts per 100,000 residents — over three times the national average of 250.2 thefts per 100,000 residents. The District of Columbia is, by some measures, among the top 20 percent of the most dangerous cities in the world.
Indeed, a corollary fact sheet says, the district’s murder rate is “higher than that of Bogota (15.1), Mexico City (10.6), Islamabad (9.2), Lima (7.6), and even major capitals like Paris (1.64), London (1.1), and Madrid (0.96).”
“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people,” Trump said during a presser. “And we’re not going to let it happen anymore.”
Far-left Democrats and their Media Megaphone blared away.
As The Daily Caller reported, “media outlets and Democratic lawmakers responded to Trump’s complaints about violent crime in D.C. by reporting that it decreased by 35% in 2024, citing local police data that leave out crimes such as felony and aggravated assault, thereby making D.C.’s crime problem appear better than it is since the onset of COVID-19 in 2020.”
Examples: Axios and The New York Times.
“Violent crime is declining in D.C. — not rising, as President Trump claimed on Monday,” Axios reported. That’s because “D.C. crime hit a 30-year low in 2024, according to a Justice Department statement in January — down 35% from the city’s 2023 crime wave.”
Armed with papers that showed crime statistics, Mr. Trump decried murders in Washington compared with other global cities but ignored the fact that violent crime has fallen recently in the nation’s capital. While the violent crime rate surged in 2023, it fell 35 percent from that year to 2024, according to the city’s Metropolitan Police Department.
The newspaper of record helpfully published a chart tracking the putative decrease.
But having drilled into the city’s data, the Daily Caller reported that crime has not dropped 35 percent. Or anywhere close to it.
“D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) only includes homicide, sex abuse crimes, assault with a dangerous weapon and robbery in its overall ‘violent crime’ numbers that show a decline in 2024,” the website reported:
Aggravated assault and felony assault without the use of weapons are left out, despite D.C. law describing them as violent offenses causing bodily injury and despite the fact that aggravated assaults are increasing, according to the FBI.
“Felony Assault does not fall under the D.C. Index violent offense categories,” the MPD told the Daily Caller … without answering specific questions.
The FBI’s violent crime data is more expansive. Its numbers tell a different tale. “Violent offenses in D.C. only decreased by 10% in 2024 and remained slightly higher than in 2018,” the website reported:
The FBI’s numbers also show that homicides have remained higher than pre-pandemic levels in the years since 2020, with the exception of 2021, a year when D.C. submitted incomplete data, according to Axios. Additionally, D.C. saw 12% more aggravated assaults with or without a weapon in 2024 than in 2023 and 37% more than in 2022, per the FBI.
As well in 2024, the city’s murder rate, fourth-highest nationally, outpaced Chicago, Atlanta, Compton, and New York City, the website reported, citing the Rochester Institute of Technology.
“The D.C. Police Union, which represents 3,000 officers, has also accused the MPD of falsifying crime statistics to make it appear that violence has decreased, NBC4 Washington reported in July,” the website noted:
The MPD reportedly suspended a police commander in May and began investigating him for allegedly making suspicious changes to the statistics for his area of D.C. Such manipulation of data is allegedly common in the department, according to D.C. Police Union Chair Gregg Pemberton.
While Trump was wrong to say violent crime has increased, the leftist media was equally wrong to claim it has decreased 35 percent. Just the News observed that despite any drop in violent crime, D.C.’s rate is still higher than most other American cities.
Even some die-hard hate-Trump leftists admit the truth. MSNBC talker Joe Scarborough discussed a text he received from someone who is “very liberal.” “This may sound controversial — but I’m not totally opposed to Trump’s National Guard move in D.C.,” the person said:
I know he’s doing it for politics — but crime remains rampant.
I’ve had too many friends carjacked, shot at. None of us will walk more than three blocks after 8 p.m.
13 year-olds are committing many of these crimes.
Quite a change from a decade ago, when things were much calmer.
Scarborough added that he recalls the days when he lived near the U.S. Supreme Court building: “Every three days, one of my neighbors was getting held up at gunpoint.”
He told equally far-left wife Mika Brzezinski that Democrats were applauding Trump privately.
“The people that are cheering this on privately are not like right-wing Republicans. They’re are not MAGA people,” he said:
A lot of our friends are in the media and also Democrats that worked on Joe Biden’s campaign, that worked on other campaigns. They’re saying “yeah, I’d like to feel safe walking around this city.”
One explanation for the city’s crime might be found in its police chief. Pamela Smith doesn’t appear to understand the basics of her job.
With Bondi and Cole in charge of city cops, a reporter asked Smith if she knew “what the chain of command is now.”
Replied a befuddled Smith: “What does that mean?”
The mayor, Muriel Bowser, stepped in to save Smith.
Before being hired as chief, Smith was the department’s “chief equity officer.” The city hired her “to continue the work MPD is already doing in the space of diversity and inclusion.”