Violent crime in DC down 35% since last year, Justice Department says

Violent crime in the nation’s capital is down 35% and is on track to be the lowest in 20 years, while carjackings involving firearms are down 55%, according to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. So far this year, there have been 2,175 violent crime incidents reported compared to 3,369 for the same period in 2023, according to the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). The spiking crime rate led former President Donald Trump in October to call D.C. a “dirty, crime-ridden death trap that must be taken over and properly run by the federal government” and promised to “clean it, renovate it, rebuild it, and most importantly, we will make it safe” if he is elected to the White House again in November. When violent crime spiked in 2022, the U.S. Attorney for D.C. “cross staffed” with federal agents and members of the MPD to “support these teams in building federal cases against drivers of gun violence,” the U.S. Attorney’s office said in a statement on Thursday. Since April 2022, the office has a “daily review” of every firearms arrest in the District “to determine whether a basis exists for federal prosecution, and, if one exists, whether the data suggests the person arrested is a driver of gun violence who should be prosecuted federally.” “In mid-2023, our Office began announcing a series of prominent federal cases aimed at violent crews engaged in carjackings, shootings, illegal firearms possession, and drug trafficking resulting from these investigations,” according to a Department of Justice fact sheet. NurPhoto via Getty Images, FILE Colin Cloherty, a former federal prosecutor, told ABC News that the office is using a data-driven approach to hold people accountable. “They’re coordinating with, obviously, the FBI and MPD, ATF on the most serious cases, but also the Department of Behavioral Health, when that approach is appropriate, says a lot about Matt Graves’ approach in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in general,” he said, referring to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. “The steep drop in violent crime we have seen in the first half of 2024 is good news, but our Office remains firmly focused on doing everything we can to continue this trend,” the office said. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/violent-crime-dc-35-year-justice-department/story?id=112898823