Homicides are down about 17% so far this year in Washington, D.C., according to the city’s Metropolitan Police Department.
In Atlanta, the decline is even larger: a 25% drop over the same time last year, according to police.
And according to the FBI, violent crimes decreased 4.5% nationwide in 2024 from the previous year, with homicides dropping 14.9% during the same time period. Violence and property crime rates, per 100,000 people, are higher in Washington, D.C., than in Georgia but were declining well before the federal government stepped in, FBI data shows.
But as President Donald Trump took over the Washington, D.C., police force and deployed the National Guard to the nation’s capital last month, he cited dire crime statistics. Gov. Brian Kemp on Friday said he is deploying more than 300 members of the Georgia National Guard to join those efforts in D.C.
So what crime numbers are the politicians looking at? It’s hard to say. Violence is dropping, according to FBI crime data. But it increased throughout the U.S. when the pandemic hit, so many law enforcement agencies are working to return to previous levels.
Even when violence declines, there is more work to do, according to FBI Special Agent in Charge Paul Brown, based in the Atlanta office.
“It is complex,” Brown told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last month. “But what you can see is this is the result of focused effort. When you see aggressive investigation, a surge of resources and aggressive prosecution, you can expect to see these numbers come down.”
In Georgia, violent crimes dropped about 10.5% in 2024 from the previous year, according to FBI data published in August. The crime statistics were voluntarily reported by 95.6% of law enforcement agencies across the country, or 16,675 departments, the FBI said.
But homicides decreased only 5.1% in Georgia, below that national average, the FBI reported. The city of Atlanta reported 127 of the 706 homicides in Georgia, according to department data.
The FBI crime numbers closely align with those published by the Council on Criminal Justice in its midyear report. That report found that homicide rates in the country’s largest cities are continuing to drop to levels last seen before the pandemic.
Data shows crime is down in Washington, D.C., but higher than the average of 42 cities the council examined, the CCJ said.
“Washington’s numbers shift depending on what time period and what types of crime you examine,” the CCJ said. “But overall, there is an unmistakable and large drop in reported violence in the District since the summer of 2023, when there were peaks in homicide, gun assaults, robbery, and carjacking.
“That downward trend is consistent with what’s being reported in other large cities across the country, while the level of violence in Washington remains higher than the average in our sample,” the council said.
Earlier this week, Trump said crime is “down 100%” in Washington. But the city’s police department reported otherwise.
On Monday, a 36-year-old man was shot to death in the 2300 block of 14th Street, according to police. A carjacking and robbery, both separate incidents, were also investigated.
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