The Washington Post doesn’t really want to give President Trump credit for the drop in crime in DC. Please look at the graph above and notice that there was a discrete change in August and September 2025 (and the change only started about half way through August on the 11th). One important point is the homicide count from DC Crime Cards from the DC police department differs from those shown in the Washington Post. For example, CrimeDataDC reports 15 in July 2025, while the Post appears to show figure 12, so they have done that to minimize the drop in August. Please check the data yourself.
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Here is the very misleading graph provided by the Washington Post. Their graph misleadingly makes it look like there was a much larger drop that was occurring immediately before President Trump’s federalization of law enforcement in DC. UPDATE: We have reached out to the Washington Post authors for comment, but have not yet heard anything back from them. Possibly this is just a simple error and not done on purpose by the Post, but it is an error that helps them make the claim that they want to make.
This is the Washington Post attempt to claim that Trump wasn’t responsible for the drop in murder and violent crime because it was already dropping. As to the concern that the surge in law enforcement by Trump would make law enforcement more difficult, the proof seems to be in terms of what actually happened to crime rates.
One criminal justice expert said D.C. appears to be mirroring a national trend in the years after covid. City leaders and a council member credit the drop to a reversal two years ago of progressive laws meant to rein in police tactics in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. A police official has cited increased arrests in homicide cases. Last year marked the city’s highest homicide clearance rate in more than a decade.
President Donald Trump has touted his surge of federal law enforcement officers in the District last summer and fall, after casting D.C. as one of the nation’s dystopian Democrat-led cities incapable or unwilling to safely guard its citizenry. Though violent crime in D.C. was already trending down before Trump declared a crime emergency in August, the number of homicides plummeted afterward. In September, the first full month after the federal law enforcement surge, five people were killed — the lowest September figure since 2011.
At the time, some D.C. police officials credited the surge with helping reduce crime, though they also worried that it cost them credibility and increased tensions in communities distrustful of law enforcement. Homicides and robberies dropped by more than half during the surge, and the extra agents augmented a police force struggling with half-century-low staffing.
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