Trump's Washington, DC, crime crackdown exposes gap between perception and reality

President Donald Trump called Washington, D.C., a metropolis overrun by "violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals" arsenic helium moved to federalize the city's constabulary unit and deploy hundreds of National Guard members.

His dire depiction of the nation's superior is astatine odds, however, with national information showing that convulsive transgression successful the District has dropped to its lowest level successful 3 decades.

"We are not experiencing a spike successful crime," Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser said Sunday connected MSNBC.

"In fact, we're watching our transgression numbers spell down," Bowser said.

Washington experienced a spike successful crime successful 2023, with the highest fig of homicides reported successful the District since the 1990s and a surge successful the fig of reported carjackings.

But that inclination has reversed since then, according to data from the Justice Department.

As Trump's unprecedented usage of statesmanlike authorization to activate the National Guard has reverberated done the city, Bowser called his characterizations of D.C. "hyperbolic" and "unsettling."

But determination is simply a cognition among immoderate residents that transgression is inactive rising successful the nation's capital, contempt the data.

A Washington Post poll past year recovered that a bulk of Washingtonians, 65%, said that transgression successful D.C. is an "extremely serious" oregon a "very superior problem."

Those rates were higher than canvass results for 2023, contempt the driblet successful transgression recorded successful 2024.

Nationally, a YouGov poll conducted past period recovered that 34% of U.S. adults said that execution rates successful U.S. cities person "increased a lot" since 1990.

That cognition is astatine likelihood with information showing that murders person fallen successful astir cities implicit the past respective decades.

Bowser suggested that the spread betwixt cognition and world is simply a relation of however transgression makes radical feel.

"It doesn't substance if transgression has gone down if you were a victim," Bowser said astatine a property league aft Trump's announcement.

Jeff Asher, a transgression information expert and co-founder of information analytics steadfast AH Datalytics, told CNBC that Americans broadly "always deliberation transgression is rising," adjacent if the information shows otherwise.

There is simply a stark partisan disagreement implicit perceptions of crime, and Trump has agelong made claims of precocious transgression successful American cities to warrant his tough-on-crime playbook.

His rhetoric — coating racially diverse, Democratic-led cities arsenic crime-ridden — besides taps into longstanding efforts to mobilize voters successful suburban areas.

A bulk of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters — 68% — said that reducing transgression should beryllium a apical argumentation precedence for the president and Congress successful 2024, compared to 47% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters, according to the Pew Research Center.

Asher told CNBC that policymakers should not "base their crime-reduction strategies and argumentation and programs connected the cognition issue."

He said that argumentation decisions should beryllium based connected data, but to marque "people consciousness safe, we person to code the cognition issue."

"I deliberation that they're 2 precise antithetic sides of a akin coin," helium continued.

Asher said that adjacent arsenic transgression rates successful the District diminution — undercutting Trump's arguments — "at the aforesaid time, you tin marque a precise valid statement that things are excessively high, that we should beryllium trying to spot less murders and the D.C. execution complaint comparative to different ample cities remains elevated."

"There's nary crushed to consciousness comfy with these declines, necessarily, arsenic imperishable successes, fixed however acold the metropolis inactive has to go, and that's existent of a batch of American cities," helium said.