On Monday in Washington, DC, a man was shot dead. Two women were injured in a separate shooting. People reported dozens of other crimes to the police.
The next day, in both public remarks and an interview, President Donald Trump claimed that Washington now has “no crime.” He said Wednesday that “there is none,” making clear that he has been making a literal assertion that crime in the capital has completely vanished.
It hasn’t.
There’s no doubt crime is down in Washington since Trump took over its police force and deployed the National Guard in August. If Trump wants to make a case for his actions, there are lots of legitimate numbers he could cite.
Instead, as he has for years, he is using a bigger but fictional number.
“Washington, DC is a totally safe city. You’re not reporting any crime because there is none,” Trump said at the White House on Wednesday. “They said crime is down 87%, and I said, ‘No it’s not. It’s down 100%.’”
It’s not “down 100%.” Publicly available police statistics make clear that crime continues to exist in the city of about 700,000 residents – as even supporters of Trump’s actions freely acknowledge.
For example, the union representing Washington police officers, whose leader has backed Trump’s federal takeover, posted on social media on Monday that, in the 21 days since the takeover was announced, overall crime had dropped 21%. That’s an unmistakable decline, but nowhere near “100%.”
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