DC is at 99 homicides so far in 2025. [1]
In reality, numbers are down from "downright terrible" to a historical 30 year low of "really bad".
However Newsweek helpfully points out that (giant) Texas has more violent crimes total (raw occurrences) per year than (comparatively tiny) DC.
You can't lie with numbers that are easily provable.
When you can draw arbitrary borders, you can make the numbers mean whatever you want.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
And you'll see that Washington D.C. doesn't make the top ten for rates of any of the major violent crimes (murder, rape, etc.) nor for the "Total" violent crime.
Climate change would like a word with you.
Once you concede on that, could you say what homicide level requires a police state as a reaction? It would appear to be within a factor of two of the present numbers, but I can't work out where the line would be.
Population does matter somewhat but not really in this case. If you’re invading a city because crime is high it only makes sense to do if it’s high in absolute numbers; otherwise you’re not really having much impact.
Also half of DC actually lives in MD and VA.
https://www.fox5dc.com/news/dc-crime-trends-trump-national-g...
The wikipedia article about then-US Attorney for DC includes this note:
"Under Graves, the US Attorney's Office declined to prosecute 67% of those arrested for crimes in DC in 2022, including 72% of misdemeanor arrests and 53% of felony arrests."
Crime is always down if you don't prosecute crime. Murder stats are the best to consider since those a harder (but not impossible) to fudge.
The pace of muders in DC this year should put it somewhere around the mid 1960's numbers of around 150: https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/dccrime.htm
So... there are the raw numbers. Want to adjust your position on that "disinfo campaign?"
I agree that it would be misleading to judge D.C. based on being at a 30 year low. Of the cities with the highest homicide rates, only Philadelphia has a higher population and rate. It's fair to say that there are other cities close in population. But it's clear that D.C. has a abnormally high homicide rate when compared to all of the other U.S. cities of its size or larger. Even if you only compared it to all other U.S. cities within, say, 100k of population, it's still at a very high percentile.
And to cite these numbers without providing context at the same time of citing them that someone was literally fired for allegedly manipulating the data. And to be clear they're just allegations, but also the data is controlled by someone whose job and ego is tied to these numbers dropping, and the rate of the drop is basically unbelievable - 25% to 28% drop in a single year? After suggesting it went down 34% the year before?
Even if my info I just wrote is something someone could dispute, is it not part of journalism to at least provide the bare minimum of context for people to at least know why this is controversial? If Trump's position on this is so soundly and clearly misguided, then it shouldn't be a problem at all to provide all facts and context to demonstrate as much. Instead we're given a single fact with zero other context.
"The Act (Posse Comitatus Act) does not prevent the Army National Guard or the Air National Guard under state authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within its home state or in an adjacent state if invited by that state's governor."
Wiki Page on the Posse Comitatus Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_ActIt was never a problem before when any minorities were victims of the same types of crime.
As the fact goes: There must be people who the law protects but does not bind, and people the law binds but does not protect.
As far as the Posse Comitatus Act he has the right to do so. Well I think, the state's governor needs to approve the use of the national guard but DC has no governor so Trump doesn't need approval to use them.
From the Wiki Page on Posse Comitatus Act
"The Act (Posse Comitatus) does not prevent the Army National Guard or the Air National Guard under state authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within its home state or in an adjacent state if invited by that state's governor."
Link to Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capito...
gnabgib•2h ago
Bender•1h ago