2023 will go down as one of the most violent years in D.C.’s history. News4’s Mark Segraves takes a look at the numbers and talks with analysts.
This year will go down as one of the most violent years in D.C.’s history. With 2 days left to go in the year, the District has already seen more homicides this year than in any year since the late 1990s.
D.C. will record more homicides this year than in any other year in more than two decades. But that’s not the same story nationwide.
Most big cities like New York, Los Angels, Baltimore and Philadelphia are seeing significant decreases in homicides.
"Nationally the trend is a sharp decline in murder this year relative to last year. "Of the 177 cities that we have data on,
murder is down 13%, or just about 13%, in those cities," said Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics, who tracks homicide trends across the country.
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Asher says the decrease in homicides nationally is at an historic level.
"Typically, murder goes up or down by a couple of percentage points," Asher said.
So far this year D.C. has seen 272 homicides. That’s a 35% increase over 2022.
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The last time D.C. had close to this many homicides was in 2002 when the number was 262.
However, D.C is not alone in seeing an increase. Dallas, Cleveland and Memphis also are also experiencing increases in the number of homicides.
"D.C. is really bucking the trend here, its sad to see," said Adam Gelb from the Council on Criminal Justice, a non-partisan think tank focused on crime in the U.S. "Most of the country is reverting to pre-pandemic level, a lot of big cities spiked up after pandemic, but now are coming back down. D.C. is really not seeing that"
"It really defies explanation," Gelb continued. "It's very troubling. It's troubling for residents of D.C., but it's troubling for the entire nation because Washington has such an outsized role in the conversation about crime and criminal justice."
