No response returned
In the nearly three weeks since President Trump federal troops and law enforcement agents throughout Washington, D.C., a TheNews analysis of crime data shows violent crime is down in Washington by almost half when compared to the same 19 days in 2024.
The analysis, reviewing every crime incident reported to the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police Department from Aug. 7 through Aug. 25, also shows violent crime is down in comparison to the five-year average for the same dates.
Beyond violent crime, reported burglaries also are down 48% and car thefts have fallen 36%.
Identifying the specific causes of changes in criminal activity is complex because it can be driven by many factors – and local police data was already showing that reported crimes were trending downward in Washington prior to the president's action.
Violent crime, for example, in the two weeks prior to Aug. 7, was down about 20% already from the same period in prior years, according to the MPD data.
TheNews also has been examining where federal troops and law enforcement are deployed in relation to crime incidents.
While and pundits suggested the deployments may have been in lower-crime areas, TheNews' analysis of the locations of reported crimes in 2025 indicates that the federal government deployed troops and other federal law enforcement agents mostly in areas with higher – and often much higher – rates of crime, violent crime and gun crime than the average neighborhood across the city.
The analysis examines the location of every crime incident within a half mile of the locations where TheNews verified that federal troops or law enforcement agents are assigned. That was compared to crime incidents within a half-mile of hundreds of other points covering the district.
Compared to neighborhoods citywide within a half mile of the 30 federal deployment locations, the concentration of overall crime incidents was nearly three times higher than the citywide average.
Additionally, violent crimes – including homicides, assaults with a weapon, sexual assaults and robberies, as well as any crime committed with a firearm – were more than twice as high, and crimes involving guns were nearly twice as high near deployment areas.
Several federal deployment locations along U Street, NW, were in areas where the number of gun crimes within a half mile of those deployments was higher than more than 90% of areas citywide.
There are other areas of the city with high concentrations of crime where TheNews has not been able to verify sightings of troops or federal law enforcement deployments – primarily most of the neighborhoods southeast of the Anacostia River. The White House has reported arrests being made in those areas, but without releasing specifics about precise locations.
"What they did is they issued numbers – it's the best in 30 years. Not the best. It's the worst. It's the worst. It's much worse. And they gave phony numbers," Mr. Trump said. He offered no proof to support his claim about the numbers.
Touting the administration's operation in the District, the president said Washington, D.C., is "very safe right now."
"Crime in D.C., was the worst ever in history," Mr. Trump said. "And now, over the last 13 days, we've worked so hard, we've taken so many. There are many left, but we've taken so many criminals – over 1,000."
Mr. Trump has floated the idea of , though he has not made a decision about whether to do so.
For comparison, TheNews' review of district police arrest records for the same days in previous years show a similar pace of arrests this year: the district police data show 1,071 arrests for the same period of days in 2024. The data document 856 arrests during that period in 2023, 800 in 2022, 755 in 2021 and 734 in 2020.
In addition to the more than 900 members of the D.C. who are deployed across the district, six Republican governors – , South Carolina, Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee – have sent upwards of 1,300 combined additional members of their states' National Guard to the nation's capital.
The National Guard footprint thus far has been mostly limited to protecting federal buildings and parks, as well as patrolling 10 Metro stations in the district, but in recent days the service members started to assist with "beautification" across the district, assisting in "restoration projects" in D.C.'s federal parks, according to a Joint Task Force D.C. spokesperson.
A spokesperson for the Joint Task Force also told that the defense secretary had directed National Guard members deployed to D.C. to begin carrying their assigned service weapon. A military official said likely fewer than 50 were to be starting that night. This was a reversal from earlier in the month, when a Defense Department official told TheNews that deployed Guard members would not be armed, at the request of local law enforcement partners. The official also said at the time they would not have weapons in their vehicles.
Local leaders, including D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, have questioned the increase in National Guard members.
"The numbers on the ground in the District don't support a thousand people from other states coming to Washington, D.C.," Bowser said at a press conference on Aug. 18, adding that she does not have control over the city's National Guard — that authority lies with the president.
The district is typically policed through local and federal law enforcement agencies.
The Metropolitan Police Department, the city's primary law enforcement agency, had 3,181 sworn members as of Aug. 15, according to a department spokesperson. The Metro Transit Police Department, which oversees security for the district's transit systems, has 482 police officers, the department said.
The U.S. Capitol Police, responsible for security at the Capitol complex and its grounds, employs nearly 2,300 sworn officers and about 500 civilian staff members, the agency said.
The U.S. Park Police officers cover federal parks, including the National Mall. The chairman of the union representing the U.S. Park Police told D.C. radio station there are 294 officers covering the D.C. area.
