“IT WAS A very safe city.” So said Mike Waters, owner of a pub in D.C.’s long-gentrified Dupont Circle area, in a neighborhood Zoom meeting this past January, neatly encapsulating a seemingly sudden deterioration in public safety.
Violent crimes rose 39 percent in Washington, D.C., last year, including a 67 percent jump in robberies. Homicides increased a stunning 35 percent. Property crime rose 24 percent, with 3,756 motor vehicle thefts in 2022 becoming 6,829 in 2023. The city’s 911 system struggled to handle 1.77 million calls, more per capita than anywhere else in the country.
The trend did not spare the powerful. In February 2023, an attacker in an apartment elevator grabbed Rep. Angie Craig (D–Minn.) by the neck. In October, three masked gunmen car-jacked Rep. Henry Cuellar (D–Texas) in the trendy Navy Yard neighborhood. And in February, a former D.C. election official, Mike Gill, was shot dead in his car while picking up his wife just off K Street. Business owners citywide deal with brazen thefts.
This did not reflect a national trend. The rest of the country saw a 13 percent drop in homicides in 2023, a reduction evident in many major cities: New York (down 11 percent), Chicago (down 13 percent), Los Angeles (down 16 percent), Atlanta (down 18 percent), Philadelphia (down 21 percent), Baltimore (down 25 percent). But in Washington, crime went up and up and up, peaking in summer 2023 and now declining somewhat but still elevated.
If your image of Washington was shaped by the urban decline of the 1970s, the crack trade of the 1980s, or the municipal bank-ruptcy of the 1990s, you might not realize that until recently the city has been generally prosperous, growing, and safe. Construction cranes dotted the city as population grew
