Summer Crime Update
Increased robberies are driving recent violent crime trends
Overall reported crime in DC increased by 3% in July on top of a 7% increase in June; continuing a trend of rising crime rates over the past few months. The most salient trend is an increase in robberies which are up 62% so far this year and have spiked since June.
Property crime is 84% of all crime and was basically flat from June to July
Violent crime rose 17% in July, with the increase mostly driven by suspects that did not use guns. However 2/3 of violent crimes still involve guns and the volume of violent crimes with guns is up 52% this year and 91% above the pre-COVID baseline.
Relative to DC’s pre-COVID baseline, the largest outliers are increases in homicides, robberies and motor vehicle thefts. While most other crimes are down, homicides and robberies are very serious and salient crimes which drives public fears.
July’s increase in violent crime was spread across 5 of DC’s 8 wards
63% of homicides so far this year are concentrated in wards 7 and 8. Ward 8 by itself is responsible for 85% of DC’s total increase in homicides this year.
Crime in DC’s Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) rose by 15% in July with 9 of 11 BIDs showing increases.
This trend is above DC’s “usual” increase in violent crime during the Summer. It’s also notable that this increase happened after Mayor Bowser announced MPD’s new “Focused Patrol and Community Engagement Policing Strategy.” We shouldn’t attribute this increase in crime to MPD’s strategy because it could be due to unrelated factors. But since we know that Mayor Bowser/MPD would be claiming credit if this approach had corresponded with a decrease in crime rates we should also be asking questions about how MPD is learning an adapting as crime is rising:
Looking by ward (which can be “noisy” month-to-month), we see a broad increase in violent crimes in the wards west of the Anacostia River and east of Rock Creek Park:
Focusing specifically on homicide, we continue to see deaths concentrated in wards 7 and 8 (where MPD assigns proportionally fewer officers and much less experienced officers). Ward 8’s YTD increase of 17 homicides is equivalent to 85% of DC’s total increase in homicides (20):
In DC’s 11 Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) we see a 15% increase in crimes across most of the BIDs:
Violent crime in DC is both concentrated in a few areas and at certain times; 64% of violent crimes in June and July took place between 9PM and 6AM:
When looking at violent crimes, Robbery is THE primary driver of this year’s increase. Robbery is 65% of violent crimes and is responsible for 92% of this year’s increase in violent crimes. Robbery significantly outnumbers the other violent crimes and in multiple occasions robberies have escalated into homicides or non-fatal assaults. Robberies tend to have lower closure rates than homicides or assault with a dangerous weapon (ADW) though it’s unclear if this is more due to the case circumstances or police departments understandably prioritizing homicides and ADWs.
One encouraging sign is that MPD has been increasing its carjacking closure rate (i.e. making arrests in a larger % of crimes). Carjackings are often classified as robberies and the increase in carjackings is a huge driver of this year’s increase in robberies. MPD has increased its closure rate from ~17% to over 30% and next door Prince George’s County managed to raise its closure rate from 18% to 48%. This is an encouraging sign but without prosecution data we don’t know how the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) is handling these cases.
US Attorney Matthew Graves seems to have ramped up his public and media appearances recently. First he spoke to a crowd at the “National Night Out” event and with WAMU reporter Jenny Gathright:
“Know that our office, the Metropolitan Police Department, and our federal law enforcement partners are completely aligned in what we need to do in response to this crisis – and that’s to go after the individuals that we know to be driving violence, and not simply wait for bad things to happen and try to close cases afterwards,”
This is generally a positive rhetorical shift towards best practices. Notably he also seems to have shifted his messaging from (mostly) deflecting blame for his office declining to press charges in 67% of arrests to blaming his predecessors and promising improvements:
“That was largely a picture of what the office looked like when I came in,” said Graves, who assumed the top prosecutor role in the fall of 2021. “There were issues that had built up over years that we are addressing — and we are addressing it in terms of increasing the number of cases that we’re bringing.” He also appears to be acknowledging the problems with gun cases that I wrote about here:
Again, from Jenny Gathright’s story: “On Tuesday, Graves said that there are “more no-papers than we’d like to see” for illegal gun possession in D.C., an issue that he says his office is working with D.C. police to address.”
Graves also attended CM Brooke Pinto’s public safety meeting in Chinatown as detailed by Washington Post reporter Peter Hermann. He announced that his office was reducing prosecutorial “discretion” for all “viable” cases in that area (around the Gallery Place Metro station) and had pressed charges in ~75% of recent misdemeanor arrests and 92% of felony arrests. This is an enormous increase over FY 2022 where the USAO only charged 28% of misdemeanor arrests and 48% of felony arrests. Perhaps this batch of MPD arrests was abnormally “viable” but this massive disparity suggests that the USAO could press charges on many more cases if they wanted to. This USAO pilot program in Chinatown raises a lot of questions about the USAO’s “prosecutorial discretion.”
The Post article also contained the (seemingly new) information that DC has signed a new lab outsourcing contract to support drug testing for misdemeanor offenses. This presumably won’t help with the enormous drop in fingerprinting, DNA and firearms testing that is holding back MPD’s violent crime investigations:
Lastly, Acting MPD Chief Pamela Smith has begun making some changes to MPD’s leadership roles. Former 1st District Commander Tasha Bryant is now the Assistant Chief of Patrol Services South (MPD’s 2nd largest command) and former 4th District Commander Carlos Heraud is now the Assistant Chief of the Investigative Services Bureau. Those promotions have also resulted in other senior MPD leaders moving into new roles and new commanders in 1D and 4D. Congratulation and best of luck to MPD’s new leaders.
Useful analysis. Thank you.
Do you have any analysis by weather — temperatures and rain? Crime is always up in the spring just because the days are longer and the weather is nice. Not suggesting that that is the only factor but for years it has been A factor.