By Tashi McQueen
AFRO Staff Writer
tmcqueen@afro.com
As 2025 came to an end, the District of Columbia saw its second year in a row of significant declines in homicides and other violent crimes.
According to the Metropolitan Police Department’s (MPD) 2025 year-end crime data, homicides decreased by 32 percent, robberies by 37 percent, sex abuse by 29 percent and assaults with dangerous weapons by 10 percent since 2024. Violent crime as a whole has declined by 29 percent, and all crime in D.C. decreased by 17 percent.
In 2024, D.C. experienced similar reductions across the board including a 30-year low in assaults with dangerous weapons and burglaries.
Although these figures are based on MPD’s reported data, the 47th presidential administration has expressed skepticism about the department’s crime statistics, claiming the reports are intentionally manipulated to downplay crime rates in the District.
A Dec. 14, 2025, report from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, alleged that MPD leadership pressured and ordered commanders to tamper with crime data.
Despite what MPD released, U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro (R) in a live-streamed Jan. 6 press conference, said that the homicide rate in D.C. has dropped by 60 percent with a 94 percent conviction rate. She largely gave the president credit for the improvement. Though Bowser has previously agreed that the president’s methods helped reduce crime in the District, she has also credited a combined effort amongst D.C. leadership and law enforcement in recent years.
“We opened the Real Time Crime Center,” said Bowser in a livestreamed press conference on the District’s biggest wins for 2025. “We deployed newer and better technology. We worked with the D.C. Council to pass needed comprehensive legislation that reset our accountability and public safety ecosystem in the District.”
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