UPDATE: The streak ended early on the 14th day, the morning of Tuesday, August 26, 2025, when 31-year-old Franck Foute Mohdjiom was fatally shot in the 300 block of Anacostia Rd SE.
Original: The news report above is from the afternoon of Friday, August 22, 2025. The DC police department shows no homicides as of that date, and there are no news reports of any homicides through Monday, August 25, 2025, so 13 days in a row.
How likely is it that 13 straight homicide-free days happened by chance? Using the homicide rate from the first seven months of 2025, the probability comes out to just 0.37%—much more significant than the 5% threshold typically used to mark a result as statistically significant.
Now these calculations assume that the previous reported number of homicides was accurate, but in a 2021 lawsuit, a D.C. Metropolitan Police Department homicide sergeant, Carlos Bundy, claims that police department “mis-categorizing deaths as something other than a homicide in order to keep the District’s homicide numbers down . . . purposely misled the public about the homicide rates in the District of Columbia . . . misclassifying unnatural deaths (for example, by labeling them as accidents).” Bundy served in the department for 28 years and was in the MPD’s homicide unit from 2010 to 2018. If Bundy’s claims are accurate, the drop in homicides is even larger than what our calculations show, and thus the levels of statistical significance are even greater than what we show. Despite this lawsuit being filed in 2021, it isn’t scheduled for mediation until 2026. Some of Bundy’s examples are shown at the end of this post.
Another factor is that homicides usually peak during the summer months, yet D.C. does not provide an accessible historical breakdown by month. As a result, including unusually low months such as February and March in the totals for the first seven months of 2025—or even in the full-year total for 2024—artificially lowers those figures compared to the August period we are examining. If we had the data to adjust for this seasonal variation, the results would likely appear even more statistically significant. The Washington Post noted there was a 16 consecutive days without a killing, spanning February 24 to March 13, 2025. But they don’t adjust for the fact that murder rates tend to be lower during the winter than the summer.
Data for 2024
Washington, D.C. recorded 187 homicides in 2024, a daily rate of 0.5137.
Using a Poisson distribution, the probability of no homicides in a given day is: 0.598. So, there’s about a 59.8% chance of a single day passing with zero homicides. Assuming for simplicity that each day is independent of all others, the probability of 13 no-homicide days = (0.598)**13 = 0.00125 or 0.13%.
To put it differently, as of the 13th day, that is the equivalent of 1 out of 800 chance of D.C. going for that long without a homicide occurring.
Data for the first seven months of 2025
Washington, D.C. recorded 99 homicide for the first seven months of 2024, a daily rate of 0.467.
Using a Poisson distribution, the probability of no homicides in a given day is: 0.627. So, there’s about a 62.7% chance of a single day passing with zero homicides. Assuming that each day is independent of all others, the probability of 13 no-homicide days = (0.627)**13 = 0.00231 or 0.23%.
To put it differently, as of the 13th day, that is the equivalent of 1 out of 432 chance of D.C. going for that long without a homicide occurring.
Who are the victims of homicide in D.C.?
A National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) analysis for D.C. homicides between 2019 and 2021 found that about 96% of victims were black. For non-fatal shootings, 97% of non-fatal shooting suspects were black.
Examples in retired MPD Sergeant Carlos Bundy’s of homicides mis-categorizing to reduce the recorded number of homicides. The misclassification of other crime data is discussed here and here.
November 29, 2019: A man was reportedly killed by a blow to the head with a brick. MPD had autopsy results, motive evidence, surveillance video, and cell phone data—but the death was officially reported as an accident, and no charges were pursued.
October 2020: A man beaten to death—autopsy confirmed homicide from blunt force injuries—but MPD classified the death as undetermined, not homicide.
May 2, 2021: A shooting, captured on camera, was cleared the same day as justifiable by a citizen—without a proper investigation—potentially skipping official homicide classification.
It isn’t just homicides that have fallen. Here is some information on other crimes.
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