Trump rejects D.C. leaders’ crime numbers, cites high-profile incidents in local policing takeover

President Trump declared an emergency over crime in the District of Columbia while disputing the accuracy of police statistics showing a 30-year low in violence in the nation’s capital.

Mr. Trump mentioned that a Metropolitan Police Department commander was suspended after being accused of fudging crime numbers during a briefing about fighting lawlessness by taking over D.C. police and sending in National Guard troops.

The allegations against former 3rd District Commander Michael Pulliam, whose precinct includes the neighborhoods of Columbia Heights and Adams Morgan, was placed on leave in May after the D.C. Police Union claimed supervisors were manipulating crime data, according to WRC-TV.

“As they say, [crime is] getting worse, not getting better, getting worse,” Mr. Trump said Monday. “There was a story about a man who had just left. He quit because he was asked to do phony numbers on crime, and we’re going to look into that.”

Mr. Trump brought up the report to counter arguments from city leaders, who have repeatedly held up plummeting crime statistics in the past two years to refute the president’s complaints about crime in the city.

“In the last two years where we have been laser focused on driving down crime, we have decreased violent crime by nearly 50% of what it was, yielding the lowest violent crime numbers our city has seen in 30 years,” read a joint statement from the D.C. Council, which is almost entirely controlled by Democrats.

Metropolitan Police data shows violent crime is down 26% so far in 2025, a year after authorities reported a 35% drop in violent crime.

The killings, muggings and carjackings that terrorized the city in 2023 — when the District experienced a generational surge in crime not seen since the late 1990s — have declined dramatically since then.

Although homicides dropped to 186 last year from a 20-year high of 274 in 2023, they were still up from 160 in 2018, according to D.C. police data.

Carjackings and nonviolent vehicle thefts are far more common today than they were a decade ago in the District.

The Trump administration touched on that by releasing its own statistics to follow the press conference.

The rate of vehicle theft in the District is more than three times the national average, the White House said, and carjackings rose 547% from 2018 to 2023.

The White House said the District had a homicide rate of 27.3 per 100,000 residents last year, which it said was the fourth-highest in the nation and outpaced other nations’ capitals such as Islamabad, Pakistan, and Havana, Cuba.

Outside the crime numbers, Mr. Trump may be looking to address the violent spasms that flare up on the tony streets around Capitol Hill and the bustling nightlife venues along 14th Street Northwest.

It was the mob assault of a former Department of Government Efficiency employee this month near a party strip in Logan Circle that helped spur Mr. Trump to exert temporary authority over the District’s public safety infrastructure.

“Days ago, a former member of the DOGE staff was savagely beaten by a band of roving thugs after defending a young woman from an attempted carjacking,” the president said Monday. “He was left dripping in blood. He thought he was dead, with a broken nose and concussion. Can’t believe that he’s alive. He can’t believe it.”

The president cited a litany of other high-profile incidents of violence this summer.

In late June, a Capitol Hill intern was killed in a wild shooting that erupted by the Mount Vernon Square Metro station. The victim, 21-year-old Eric Tarpinian-Jachym, was an innocent bystander when he was mortally wounded by gunfire.

Days later, a 3-year-old girl was shot in the head after a gunman opened fire on her family’s car in Southeast during the Fourth of July weekend. Honesty Cheadle eventually died in a hospital. 

Mr. Trump has a more personal connection to the 2024 killing of Mike Gill, a former White House official on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Gill was shot dead on K Street Northwest in an armed man’s rampage.

The president called Gill a “fantastic person” who was “murdered last year in cold blood in a carjacking blocks away from the White House.”

“We all knew him. Great person. Waiting for his wife as she was walking to the car,” Mr. Trump said of the slain father of three.

Mr. Trump rifled off other headline-grabbing crimes from years past, including the gunpoint carjacking of Rep. Henry Cuellar outside his ritzy Navy Yard apartment and the knife attack against a staffer for Sen. Rand Paul that was carried out by a “demented lunatic.”

Beyond violence, the president appeared intent on tamping down the disorder that stems from hordes of youths running through neighborhoods or ATV-driving motorists who crowd major roads.

Mr. Trump also said he plans to remove the homeless encampments in the District that he has often said are an eyesore in the nation’s capital.

“The process begins right now,” Mr. Trump said. “We confront bad people, but it’s going to be something that will be pretty amazing to you as you watch it. And I think most of you say it’s a beautiful thing to do.”