Trump says crime in D.C. is out of control. Here's what the data shows.

Washington Post

6 days ago

President Donald Trump once again catapulted crime in D.C. into the national conversation with renewed threats last week of a federal takeover and an image of a young federal staffer, beaten and bloodied, after an attempted carjacking.
He has since ordered more federal law enforcement agents to be deployed on city streets and called for teenagers as young as 14 to be charged as adults as he continues to cast the capital as overrun with violent youngsters. And on Saturday, he said he would continue addressing the issue in a Monday news conference.
Local and federal data, though, paint a contrasting picture.
D.C. police have made about 900 juvenile arrests this year — almost 20 percent fewer than during the same time frame last year. About 200 of those charges are for violent crimes, and at least four dozen are for carjacking. This summer, D.C. officials have also implemented stricter curfew laws for teens in response to concerns about large brawls — recorded in videos that spread on social media — breaking out in communities across the city.
Violent crime in D.C. has been on the decline since 2023, when a generational spike in killings rendered the nation's capital one of America's deadliest cities, plunging communities into grief and igniting a local political crisis that escalated to Congress.
The decrease is part of a nationwide drop that in 2024 brought homicide rates to their lowest level in decades. This year, homicides are down more than 30 percent in data that The Washington Post collected from more than 100 police departments in large U.S. cities. Reports of burglaries and robberies also dipped by double-digit percentages.
Not captured in statistics, though, is the grief, pain and shattered sense of safety that follow each crime.
A few hours before 19-year-old software engineer and Elon Musk protégé Edward Coristine was beaten, a man suffered a nonfatal gunshot wound. Later that day, a 27-year-old man would be fatally shot blocks from the Capitol. The following night, a 38-year-old Northwest Washington resident was killed in gunfire in Columbia Heights. None of these crimes made national headlines.
But the image Trump shared of Coristine continues to ricochet online.
Last week, the president described crime in D.C. as 'out of control,' with young 'thugs' and 'gang members' who are 'randomly attacking, mugging, maiming, and shooting innocent Citizens.'
FBI arrest data collected by The Post shows juvenile arrests nationwide have largely been dropping since the 1990s. In 2024, the rate was about 439 juvenile arrests per 100,000 juveniles, down 7 percent from 2023 and five times lower than in 1997.
Juvenile arrests are down in D.C. this year, but the trend doesn't hold everywhere.
In Baltimore, police made 1,377 juvenile arrests in 2024, a 47.4 percent increase from the year prior, according to FBI data. In New York City, juvenile arrests were up 10.9 percent in 2024 compared with 2023 and are continuing to rise: New York police made more than 5,200 arrests from January through June this year, up almost 10 percent from the same period the year before.
And Chicago is seeing an even sharper rise, but the juvenile arrest count there remains less than half of the 2019 figure.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, the Trump-appointed prosecutor who handles most of D.C.'s adult crime, said the nation's capital shields violent youngsters from consequence. She joined the president last week in advocating that more teenagers, including those as young as 14, be funneled into the adult justice system. In D.C., suspects as young as 15 can be charged as adults.
'Young people are coddled, and they don't need to be coddled anymore,' Pirro said Thursday at a news conference. 'They need to be held accountable.'
Eduardo Ferrer, policy director of Georgetown Law's Juvenile Justice Initiative, said it was important to keep in mind that the vast majority of D.C.'s teenagers are doing the right things.
And for that minority of young people who commit serious violent crimes, the solution should not be charging them as adults, Ferrer said. He pointed to an influential Centers for Disease Control study from 2007 that found youths charged as adults were 34 percent more likely to be rearrested than those who went through the juvenile justice system.
'The evidence shows that this is a policy that may sound tough on crime but actually undermines public safety,' Ferrer said.
Since early July, an 11 p.m. citywide curfew has been in effect for those 17 and younger. It runs though August.
Local leaders also implemented stricter curfew laws for teens in response to concerns about large brawls, including at the Southwest Waterfront and in the U Street corridor in Northwest Washington.
The city has had four 'juvenile curfew zones' this summer — locations with more restrictive rules from 8 to 11 p.m. The night Coristine was attacked, a curfew zone was in place in parts of Southwest and Northeast Washington. There have been no reported violations of those curfews, according to D.C. police.
Hours after Coristine was attacked, residents in a nearby block were rattled awake by shouting on their usually quiet, tree-lined street. One person described peeking out their window and seeing a rowdy crowd of youngsters, some in masks. Later, they saw a young man, beaten and bloodied.
When D.C. police arrived, 'all parties had fled the scene and the officers had nothing found,' according to a department spokesperson. When asked whether there were other incidents in the area in the predawn hours of last Sunday, the spokesperson said 'there were unfounded reports of suspicious groups; however, officers did not locate any such groups.'
But the weekend's incident unnerved residents, even before the nearby attack of Coristine captured the president's and the nation's attention.
'This is a safe city, but overhearing and witnessing gang threats and then watching the camera footage of the thuggery is disturbing,' said one resident, speaking on the condition of anonymity over concerns of personal safety. The crowd of teens, he said, were roaming the street and appeared to be checking for unlocked cars and things to steal.
'The language Trump uses to describe D.C. is wrong,' he said, 'but clearly there is something bad going on that needs to stop.'