MPD arrest trends: More gun charges & out-of-staters

Digging into 2022's arrest data

Arrest data gives us a picture into what kind of crimes MPD is focusing on and where they are able to gather enough evidence to make an arrest. It also informs what kind of crimes are making it through the “pipeline” to the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO). In 2022 MPD made over 15K adult arrests and 1,682 juvenile arrests:

• Arrest volumes are down significantly from the pre-COVID baseline

  • Adults arrests in 2022 were down 48% from the 2015-2019 average

  • Juvenile arrests in 2022 were down 43% from the 2016-2019 average

  • MPD’s arrests-per-officer is down 44% in addition to decreases in staffing

• A growing share of arrests are of out-of-state residents

  • In 2022 39% of MPD’s adult arrests were of out-of-staters, up 7% from 2021

  • Only 12% of juvenile arrests were of out-of-state youth, up 2% from 2021

• Most adult arrest categories are down with the key exceptions of weapon violations (+60% from pre-COVID) and homicide (+28%, due to more homicides occurring)

  • Remember the USAO cited “gun possession” as one of the crimes where they are declining more cases.

  • At lest 13% of the “gun possession” arrests in one police district were dropped due to MPD concerns that some officers “lied on internal reports”

  • Traffic violations had the largest decline (-73% from pre-COVID) even as many Washingtonians feel drivers have gotten more reckless

• Most juvenile arrest categories are down but there have been significant increases in arrests for carjacking and carrying a pistol

MPD releases its adult and juvenile arrest data annually which greatly hinders efforts to track arrest rates in a timely manner. This means that unfortunately the most recent dataset ends in December 2022. To start, it’s important to remember that arrest volumes fell a lot during COVID and have remained low ever since:

We talked about this trend before in this post, where decreased MPD staffing and a 44% decrease in arrests-per-officer have reduced arrest volumes. Today we’ll look more into the details, starting with the residency of those under arrest:

Arrest data is organized by Police District and Police Service Area (map here). In short, the # of DC resident arrests have fallen every year since 2017 while out-of-state arrests rebounded a bit in 2022. This implies that a lot “DC’s crime problem” is imported from surrounding jurisdictions, which complicates efforts at preventing crime. Recall that when we looked at homicide arrests, 38% of them were “out-of-state” (mostly Maryland) or “no fixed address.”

We can also see that most adult arrests are for crimes committed outside the defendant’s home police district. This is especially true for crimes in districts 1-5. In districts 6 and 7 a plurality of 46% of defendants are “local” (from the same district).

Looking at adult arrest categories we can see large decreases in almost every category relative to the pre-COVID baseline. Notably weapon violations arrests are up 60%, probably reflecting the large increase in gun-carrying (remember gun crimes are up 34% over the pre-COVID baseline) although many of those cases aren’t sticking. The largest decrease in arrests is in traffic violations. It’s understandable that MPD has prioritized other offenses but few Washingtonians would say that the roads are safer now than pre-COVID:

For juvenile arrests, we see similar decreases in most types of charges but large increases in carjacking and carrying a pistol. More people carrying and using guns seems to be a common thread across crime and arrest data. The juvenile arrest data aligns well with Chief Contee’s comments: "Our young people are showing up in crimes involving shootings, crimes involving carjackings at a pace that I have not seen in my 30-plus year career":

The arrest data confirms how much widespread gun possession is driving crime and public fear in DC. Almost all guns and ~39% of DC’s criminals flow in from neighboring states; complicating efforts to prevent crime especially when 2/3 of MPD’s arrests don’t lead to any charges by the USAO. This data reminded me that in Keith Alexander’s Washington Post article USAO “Graves said the declinations are mostly coming after arrests in cases such as gun possession, drug possession and misdemeanors — not in violent crimes.” This seems to align with less focus and lab resources (like testing DNA swabs to confirm possession of a gun found in a vehicle) for these gun cases. MPD is trying to get “upstream” of violent crimes by making arrests for illegal gun possession, as shown by the big increase in “weapon violations” arrests. Unfortunately DC’s Federal prosecutor appears to not prioritize these arrests like violent crimes and a lot of the “preventative” effect of these arrests is lost when the cases are dropped.

It’s just as important to resolve the “problems” with MPD and DFS’ handling of gun cases. The 65 dropped gun possession charges in Police District 7D reported by the Washington Post represent ~13% of that district’s yearly “Weapon Violations” arrests. That public number is very likely only a subset of the total cases with issues. MPD internal affairs are weighing very serious accusations against these officers: “whether those on a violent crime squad lied on internal reports.” This cloud of suspicion around the credibility of some officers (more in this post) is something that MPD leadership and the Mayor’s administration need to take seriously and I hope this will be part of the Mayor’s promised updated public safety plan.