This is, I think, the best chart that shows what was/is going on in DC WRT crime and how residents feel. This will be TL; DR post.
You’ll have to zoom in. The red is carjackings, the yellow is murder, the orange is DC’s “violent crime index.”
Up front: It’s not true that DC is in the throes of the worst crime/violent crime wave ever, there was a drop in 2024, and there’s no reason to federalize the city.
There’s some things that are absolutely true though.
1. It’s absolutely true that crime in DC right now really and truly is significantly and notably worse than it was not that long ago and well within memory of most residents and a complete reversal of the success story that got started in the late 1990s. It is not vibes or perception, it’s real. Those numbers represent bodies and horrifying victimizations and it is a quality of life issue for the entire city. Residents have every right to want to get back to mid-2010s DC and we are nowhere close.
2. Lots of cities around the country saw crime spikes associated with COVID and unrest around 2020s; DCs was both more dramatic and has lasted longer.
3. DC is not the most dangerous city in the country; places like Memphis or Baton Rouge have bigger problems. At the same time DC is more like those cities than it is say, NYC or Boston and that’s an issue for the national capital and aspiring Tier 1 city. We for sure want to be more like NYC than St. Louis.
4. Carjackings represent a particular problem because it’s crime that impacts civilians who just want to go about their lives. A year or two where a gang turf war gets out of hand is terrible, but the risk to most law-abiding people is pretty low. With the spate of carjackings all of the sudden people with no nexus to criminality are being victimized in pretty terrifying and brutal ways with few mitigating options aside from “don’t drive.” That’s not sustainable and it’s going to cause blowback.
5. The carjackings have gotten better but it’s still ridiculously, stupidly bad. Everyone knows who is doing it— a small (like, a couple dozen) number of minors probably account for about fifty percent of that number. And you can also look at a heat map and see that there are much fewer in Maryland and basically zero in Virginia even though it’s five minutes away. The reason is obvious, your ass will get locked up in those states and if you read the reports you will see that a substantial number of teen carjackers actually come in from Maryland specifically to do crime because there has been almost no consequences as long as you did it in the district.
6. Beyond the numbers, DC is a lot smaller than people realize— it’s about 700k people and a really small footprint. You can do a lot to avoid the disorder and risk but again, it’s not NYC and the crime is happening close to you almost no matter who you are.
7. I honestly don’t know why the “violent crime index” is out of whack with the murders and carjackings. That’s something to dive into. It’s safe to say that the level of petty crime and non-violent crime and “takeovers” resulting in property damage and malicious loitering has also gone noticeably up than where it was not too long ago and that also got people pissed off. Putting special officers in the metro has made that experience a lot better but it’s also completely fair to say that it was a step that came too late and only after a lot of denial.
Anyway, the National Guard aren’t going to fix the problem and I am concerned that all this will do is spike the forward momentum to address the issues that had finally happened, because this will give a lot of ammo to the irresponsible wing of local politicians to continue doing nothing.