President Trump on Monday announced drastic measures to crack down on crime in the nation's capital, but data shows crime in Washington, D.C., is declining. CBS News' Anna Schecter has the details.

Washington

Recent data from Washington, D.C. shows that overall crime rates, including violent crime and homicides, are declining and nearing pre-pandemic levels. This trend contrasts with President Trump's statements describing the city as experiencing a surge in violence and justifying federal intervention and the deployment of National Guard troops.

Although there was a significant spike in crime during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in 2023, the latest figures indicate a marked improvement. Some issues, such as juvenile carjackings, remain higher than before the pandemic but have also decreased from their peak. D.C.'s crime trends are consistent with national patterns and remain significantly lower than the levels seen in the early 1990s.

Data shows crime declining in D.C., contradicting Trump's claims

As we have been reporting, President Trump is taking drastic measures to crack down on crime in our nation's capital. The president is directing the Pentagon to deploy hundreds of National Guard troops to D.C., and he is also ordering the federal government to take control of the local police force. But the move comes as crime in the district is actually going down. Let's bring in Anna Schechter. She is a senior coordinating producer for CBS News' Crime and Public Safety Unit. Anna, we always appreciate your insight in all of this. Let's talk a little bit about the police data, though, because it doesn't necessarily go in line with what President Trump is saying. What have you found? Well, sure. We did have a spike in violent crime in Washington, D.C., as we saw throughout the country in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in D.C. in 2023. So it was so high that last year, when it started to fall, it was falling pretty dramatically, and it continued to fall in the first half of this year. So really positive news. We're almost getting down to pre-pandemic levels for the murder rate. Other violent crimes, we're getting there. This is a positive trend. So when Trump was describing a really violent dystopia that D.C. is, it didn't really jive with sort of a holistic look at the data. Now, we have had some high-profile crimes, and particularly there was a Doge employee who was assaulted in the midst of a carjacking. Juvenile carjacking numbers really spiked in 2023, and they remain pretty high. They haven't gone down to pre-pandemic levels. So that is something that the city needs to work on. But they have come down dramatically from 2023, and sort of all the trend lines look like it's improving. So again, we're seeing positive news, but that carjacking issue is actually one that D.C. continues to struggle with. Just taking this out a little bit wider, how does crime in D.C. compare with the rest of the country as a whole? Well, it's pretty much in line with the trends of spike. Violent crime spiked. Property crime actually went down. And then as people started to get out and about doing more, that increased. And homicides have been decreasing, sort of approaching pre-pandemic levels. So D.C. is pretty much in line with the national trend. But I want to even widen the aperture out to, say, the early 1990s. That's when we saw huge numbers in terms of homicide, violent crime. So that was way higher than we saw even in 2023. So just a little bit of historical perspective there. It's not nearly as bad as it was in the 1990s. Always important to have that context. Anna Schechter, thank you very much.

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