Crime fell 7% in August

A new positive trend or just reversion after July's spike?

After four consecutive months of rising crime rates, DC finally got some relief with a 7% decrease in reported crimes in August. This decrease was pretty broad across most types of crimes and DC’s 8 wards with a particularly sharp decrease in robberies. However homicides were higher in August than any previous month this year and only time will tell if overall crime will continue to decrease.

• Property crime is 84% of all crimes in DC and was down 3% in August

• Violent crime fell 24% in August, with similar decreases in violent crimes both with and without guns

  • Robberies are the main driver of this trend since they fell 31% and are the majority of DC’s violent crimes

• Over the longer term, crime in January-August 2023 was up 29% compared to last year and ~2% lower than DC’s pre-COVID baseline. The crimes that are more common now than pre-COVID are motor vehicle theft, robbery and homicides while crimes like theft, assault with a dangerous weapon and burglary are less common.

• 60% of homicides so far this year are concentrated in wards 7 and 8.

• Crime in DC’s Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) fell by 4% in August with 6 of 11 BIDs showing decreases.

Most wards saw decreases in property and violent crimes. Ward 8 is an outlier in that it was the only ward to see an increase in violent crime in August and MPD shifted 6 more officers out of Ward 8’s police district 7D in September’s staffing report:

Looking specifically at homicides, wards 7 and 8 represent 60% of DC’s homicides so far this year but there have also been increases in wards 6, 1 and 4:

In DC’s 11 Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) we see a 4% decrease in crimes but with a lot of variability between different BIDs:

Robbery trends have been the primary driver of this year’s increase in violent crime and the recent decrease in August. In the graph below we see that most Police Service Areas (PSAs) had more robberies in July (X-axis) than August (Y-axis). Some PSAs had very significant improvements:

• PSA 305 (U Street) had 27 robberies in July and 11 in August

• PSA 603 (Benning/Fort Dupont) had 24 robberies in July and 12 in August

• PSA 607 (Fairlawn) had 16 robberies in July and 3 in August

August’s 31% reduction in robberies is a positive development but it’s important to remember that this is a reduction relative to June/July’s robbery spike. August still had more robberies than May, every previous month in 2023 and the pre-COVID baseline. It’s also unclear if August’s decrease is just a random development or due to some proactive effort by the DC government. MPD has ramped up a “Robbery Suppression Initiative” (including supposedly more overtime hours dedicated to this effort) but it’s nearly impossible to accurately attribute monthly changes in crime rates to any specific program. Hopefully this trend will continue into future months.