Violent crime in DC down 35% since last year, Justice Department says

Violent crime in the nation's capital is down 35% and is on track to be the lowest in 20 years, while carjackings involving firearms are down 55%, according to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

So far this year, there have been 2,175 violent crime incidents reported compared to 3,369 for the same period in 2023, according to the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). Over the same period, there were 4,554 violent carjackings compared to 3,002 this year.

The spiking crime rate led former President Donald Trump in October to call D.C. a "dirty, crime-ridden death trap that must be taken over and properly run by the federal government" and promised to "clean it, renovate it, rebuild it, and most importantly, we will make it safe" if he is elected to the White House again in November. Because the District is not a state, Congress has oversight of the city's governance and congressional Republicans have long sought to assert more control over it.

When violent crime spiked in 2022, the U.S. Attorney for D.C. "cross staffed" with federal agents and members of the MPD to "support these teams in building federal cases against drivers of gun violence," the U.S. Attorney's office said in a statement on Thursday.

Since April 2022, the office has a "daily review" of every firearms arrest in the District "to determine whether a basis exists for federal prosecution, and, if one exists, whether the data suggests the person arrested is a driver of gun violence who should be prosecuted federally."

The office used forensics, and other investigative techniques to target the worst offenders of violent crimes.

"In mid-2023, our Office began announcing a series of prominent federal cases aimed at violent crews engaged in carjackings, shootings, illegal firearms possession, and drug trafficking resulting from these investigations," according to a Department of Justice fact sheet.

Colin Cloherty, a former federal prosecutor, told ABC News that the office is using a data-driven approach to hold people accountable.

"They're coordinating with, obviously, the FBI and MPD, ATF on the most serious cases, but also the Department of Behavioral Health, when that approach is appropriate, says a lot about Matt Graves' approach in the U.S. Attorney's Office in general," he said, referring to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

The U.S. Attorney's office said it will continue to "innovate and refine" its approach in going after violent carjackings in the city.

"The steep drop in violent crime we have seen in the first half of 2024 is good news, but our Office remains firmly focused on doing everything we can to continue this trend," the office said. "We have a number of important ongoing investigations designed to keep the community safe, and every week we remove from our community known drivers of gun violence."

Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill earlier this year introduced a series of bills days after the D.C. City Council passed a series of sweeping public safety measures aimed at curbing crime and closing significant loopholes by updating D.C.'s criminal code for the first time since 1901. Because D.C. is not a state, Congress has oversight of the city's governance.

The last attempt to update the archaic criminal code failed in 2023 and Republicans in the House and Senate blocked the bills from becoming law.