Fact check: Trump's false claims about Washington, D.C. – DW – 08/15/2025
Two months after deploying the National Guard in Los Angeles, US President Donald Trump has sent 800 National Guard troops into the American capital. On Monday, he placed the city's police department under federal control, and announced that he would bring in the military if necessary. He justified the move by saying that Washington had a very high level of violent crime, and quoted various statistics to support this.
Claim:
"Crime is out of control in the District of Columbia. […] The magnitude of the violent crime crisis places the District of Columbia among the most violent jurisdictions in the United States," Trump declared in an official White House statement on August 11, reiterating a claim he had posted on his Truth Social platform on August 5. "In 2024, the District of Columbia averaged one of the highest robbery and murder rates of large cities nationwide. Indeed, 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."
DW Fact check: Misleading
At first glance, it would appear that Trump is right. Crime rates in the US capital are indeed high [see table]. According to the FBI, the National Center for Health Statistics, and the Center for Public Safety Initiatives, in 2023, compared to the 50 US states, Washington, D.C., was one of the most dangerous territories in the US, with a murder rate of 39 for every 100,000 inhabitants.
However, if the numbers for the same year are compared to other major US cities, rather than US states, Washington, which currently has a population of around 684,000, is not the worst offender. Top of the chart, with homicide rates of more than 50 per 100,000 inhabitants, were the cities of New Orleans and St. Louis (Missouri), whose populations are only about half the size. Washington, D.C., is not actually a state, which makes the city comparison more apt.
Trump also fails to mention in his statement that the homicide rate in Washington, D.C., has dropped significantly, from 39 per 100,000 in 2023 to 27 in 2024, which is the figure Trump is quoting. This puts Washington in fourth place in the most recent national statistics of cities with the most homicides per 100,000 residents.
According to Washington, D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department, there was a 32% decrease in the number of recorded murders in 2024 — down to 187 from 274 cases in 2023. And a comparable annual period of August 2024 to the present (August 2025) has seen a 26% reduction in reported violent crime.
The mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, spelled this out earlier this week. "It is […] true that we experienced a crime spike post-COVID," she said. "But we worked quickly to put laws in place, and tactics, that got violent offenders off our streets and gave our police officers more tools. Which is why we have seen a huge decrease in crime, because of those efforts. We have been able to reverse that 2023 crime spike."
Trump supporters are claiming in various online media — as here and here — that the Washington, D.C., Police Department's statistics have been falsified. And yet statistics published by the independent Council on Criminal Justice also confirm that crime in Washington has in fact decreased.
The FBI statistics Trump is using also attest that crime is going down all across the US. According to FBI Data Explorer, there was a reduction in all forms of violent crime in the US in 2024 compared to the previous year.
The number of murders dropped by 14.9%, robbery by 8.9%, rape by 5%, and aggravated assault by 3%. Recent data show that this positive trend has continued in 2025.
Unlike the president himself, the new AI bot on Trump's Truth Social network gives a nuanced response to the question "Is crime out of control in Washington, D.C.?"
"D.C. had a severe crime peak in 2023, but 2025 data show significant declines so far," it says. "Describing crime as 'out of control' today overstates the current downward trend while accurately reflecting the recent high-water mark and ongoing public concern."
Trump has also said that his intervention in Washington is "only the beginning." He mentioned the cities of Chicago, New York, Baltimore, and Oakland as places where he might also deploy the National Guard.
During his first term in office, Trump mobilized the National Guard in more than half of the US states following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in May 2020. The troops were sent in to confront the mass protests by the Black Lives Matter movement.
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