Washington, D.C., faces one of the nation’s worst crime crises — with murder and robbery rates dwarfing those of entire states, according to FBI data.
While national crime statistics already capture only a fraction of offenses — just 40% of violent crimes and 30% of property crimes are reported — the situation in the nation’s capital is even worse, Crime Prevention Research Center President John Lott Jr. wrote for The Federalist.
Police officers and union leaders have long accused the Metropolitan Police Department of manipulating numbers, downgrading felonies to misdemeanors, and misclassifying violent incidents to make the city’s crime picture look less severe. In one case, a domestic violence assault that left a victim with a deep cut was reclassified as a “sick person to the hospital,” keeping it off the books as a serious crime, Lott wrote.
But even without accounting for alleged underreporting, the official data is grim, Lott wrote. In 2023, D.C.’s violent crime rate was 54% higher than New Mexico’s — the most dangerous state — and 220% above the national average. Compared with the nation’s 20 largest cities, Washington ranked near the top in nearly every category.
The murder rate stands out most. D.C.’s rate was 169% higher than Louisiana’s — historically the deadliest state — and an astounding 523% higher than the average state. Philadelphia, which had the second-highest murder rate among major U.S. cities, still fell 50% below Washington’s level.
Robbery paints an even darker picture, Lott wrote.
The capital’s robbery rate was nearly four times higher than Maryland’s — the worst among states — and almost 10 times higher than the U.S. average. Among the 25 largest cities, D.C. ranked first in robberies, and across 796 cities with populations above 50,000, it still placed third overall.
Other violent crimes, including rape and aggravated assault, also far exceeded national norms — 191% and 140% above the state averages, respectively. . . .
“As you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country,” moderator David Muir piously corrected Trump.
But, after the debate, of course, the FBI updated its report. After reporting a 2.1% decrease in violent crimes in 2022, the FBI amended the number to show there was actually a 4.5% increase.
“According to crime and data expert John Lott, the new numbers reflect a net increase of 80,029 violent crimes in 2022 over 2021,” Fox News reported at the time. “He found that under the umbrella of violent crime, there were an additional 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies and 37,091 aggravated assaults that year.”
And when the FBI released the accurate stats after the fact, ABC and Muir didn’t acknowledge it or apologize. . . .
The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC)suggests civilians stopped 51.5 percent of active shootings in areas where carrying is allowed – sometimes outperforming law enforcement in such zones.
Experts like Dr. John Lott, who serves as president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, say that “it’s not rocket science” to figure out the reasons behind the continued high rates of violent crime in the nation’s capital.
“Basically, if you want to deter crime, you have to make it risky for criminals to go and commit crime,” he observed during “Washington Watch” Tuesday. “And that means higher arrest rates, higher conviction rates, longer prison sentences, allowing victims to be able to go and defend themselves. Washington, D.C. [has] 1,300 patrol officers. You have at most 400 or so on duty at any point in time. For a city of 720,000 people, that’s a lot of ground to cover. The police union head has said their officers are stretched very thin. It’s hard for them to do what they need to do. Plus, there’s all sorts of restrictions that the city has put on them, making it more difficult for them to go and do their jobs.”
As Lott went on to describe, another contributing factor to spiraling crime is the significant lack of prosecution and conviction rates.
“The U.S. attorney … under Biden in 2022… refused to press charges in 67% of the arrests that were made,” he noted. “In 2023, it was slightly better, but he still refused to press charges in 55% of the arrests that were made. That’s not making [crime] very risky. … [A] lot of the crime has been committed by juveniles, in part because [of] how they are treated differently in the system there, and you have situations where juveniles are being let off — even when they get convicted, [they are] not facing any real punishments at all.”
Lott further detailed how crime statistics are being distorted by discrepancies in reporting.
“[W]e have two different measures of crime — we have crimes reported to police, and then we have from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a measure of total crimes reported and unreported,” he explained. “And that’s from a really massive 240,000-person survey that the Bureau of Justice Statistics does each year, and they’ve been doing this for over 50 years. It’s basically because of that data that we know only about 40% of violent crimes are reported to police, and only about 30% of property crimes are reported to police.”
Lott continued, “[T]here are multiple reasons for why you have that gap that’s occurring. One thing that’s happened [is that] whether people report crimes to the police depends in part on whether they think the criminal is going to be caught and punished. If people don’t think that the criminals are going to be caught at very high rates, they’re less likely to go and report that information to the police. … [A]nother example … [is that] six years ago, if you called the police, they would send out a police car to take the report. Now [if you say] the criminal isn’t there, [they tell you to] come down to the police station and fill out a police report that’s here and wait in line while you do that.” . . .
Author and crime expert John R. Lott Jr. says President Trump’s federal presence in Washington DC is bound to make a.dent in the city’s crime rate. Lott says it’s not that hard to see that the was to cut crime is to make it more costly for people to commit crime. He says that can happen with more arrests and convictions, and harsher sentences, and allowing people to defend themselves. Lott says that’s not happening in DC, which only has some 1,300 patrol officers. A burden he says will be eased by Trump’s deployment of some 800 National Guard troops. Lott is the author of More Guns, Less Crime, and spoke with the Salem Radio Network.
. . . According to John R. Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center, “Most developed countries ban absentee ballots unless the citizen is living abroad or require Photo-IDs to obtain those ballots.”
“Even higher percentages of European Union or other European countries ban absentee for in country voters,” Lott wrote in a report published in 2020.
“In addition, some countries that allow voting by mail for citizens living [in] the country don’t allow it for everyone. For example, Japan and Poland have limited mail-in voting to those who have special certificates verifying that they are disabled,” he continued.
As for total mail-in ballot bans, they exist in countries like France and Sweden precisely because of concerns about ballot security.
What’s also true is that a bipartisan 2005 report from the Commission on Federal Election Reform, then-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker III, found that “absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.”
This fact was highlighted in an editorial for The Wall Street Journal penned by Lott in 2020.
“Intimidation and vote buying were key concerns of the commission,” he reported he at the time. “The report provides examples, such as the 1997 Miami mayoral election that resulted in 36 arrests for absentee-ballot fraud. The election had to be rerun, and the result was reversed.” . . .
The data on gun-free zones presents an undeniable pattern that policymakers and pundits continue to overlook. Research from the Crime Prevention Research Center shows that an overwhelming majority of mass public shootings occur in areas where firearms are prohibited.
According to pro-gun researcher John Lott’s findings, “since 1950, 94% of the mass public shootings have taken place in areas where law-abiding citizens have been banned from having guns.” Even more damning, Lott’s research reveals that mass shooters often seek out gun-free environments because they understand these zones guarantee minimal resistance. This pattern demolishes the naive assumption that posted signs and regulations deter criminals who are hell-bent on committing dastardly deeds. . . .
What’s funny, though, is how they highlight all the ways they say guns can kill, but they completely ignore it when guns save lives.
Obviously, John Lott doesn’t.
Writing at TheBlaze, he brings receipts regarding what the media does or, more accurately, doesn’t do. . . .
Lott goes on to note that when it comes to armed security, things are a little different.
When we remember the Buffalo shooting, an armed security officer was one of the first people killed by the gunman. That happened again in Manhattan just recently.
It seems that’s kind of the norm, according to Lott. . . .
According to John R. Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center, “Most developed countries ban absentee ballots unless the citizen is living abroad or require Photo-IDs to obtain those ballots.”
“Even higher percentages of European Union or other European countries ban absentee for in country voters,” Lott wrote in a report published in 2020.
“In addition, some countries that allow voting by mail for citizens living [in] the country don’t allow it for everyone. For example, Japan and Poland have limited mail-in voting to those who have special certificates verifying that they are disabled,” he continued.
As for total mail-in ballot bans, they exist in countries like France and Sweden precisely because of concerns about ballot security. . . .
John Lott’s findings, “since 1950, 94% of the mass public shootings have taken place in areas where law-abiding citizens have been banned from having guns.” Even more damning, Lott’s research reveals that mass shooters often seek out gun-free environments because they understand these zones guarantee minimal resistance. This pattern demolishes the naive assumption that posted signs and regulations deter criminals who are hell-bent on committing dastardly deeds. . . .
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