Border czar Tom Homan criticized the media on Monday for downplaying crime in Washington, D.C., by reporting it has plunged.
While legacy media outlets have reported that crime decreased by 35% in 2024, their figures rely on local police data that exclude offenses like felony and aggravated assault, thereby making the district’s crime problem seem better than it is since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Homan, on “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” challenged reporters to spend time on the streets late at night if the city is truly so “safe.”
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“I’ve been in law enforcement for 40 years. I won’t transit D.C. without a gun,” Homan said. “And any of these reporters that said the crime rate is way down and it’s safer than they say, I dare any of them: walk the streets of D.C. after dark. If it’s that safe, go ahead and do it. See how that works out for you.”
Host Rob Schmitt asked Homan for his response to those attempting to “spin” crime as improving despite residents’ experiences and news reports seeming to refute the narrative.
“It’s the same people who said the border was secure as you and I watched thousands of people cross the border every day … they think we’re idiots,” the border czar responded. “So, you know, anybody that transits D.C., works in D.C. or lives in D.C., they know the truth.”
“And just like the ones who were smart, we knew the border was not secure. We knew the border was a historic crisis,” he continued. “So, you know, the lies, the lies, the lies. They think if they lie enough, people start believing them. But Americans are smarter.”
D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) solely includes homicide, sex abuse crimes, assault with a dangerous weapon and robbery in its overall “violent crime” data that demonstrated a decline in 2024. Aggravated assault and felony assault without the use of weapons are excluded, although D.C. law describes them as violent offenses inflicting bodily injury and despite the fact that aggravated assaults are rising, according to the FBI.
The FBI features a wider range of assaults in its violent crime statistics for D.C. based on what local police provide to the bureau. As a result, the FBI’s data demonstrate that the number of violent crimes in D.C. fell by just 10% in 2024 and remained slightly higher than in 2018.
Moreover, the FBI’s data also reflect that homicides have remained higher than pre-pandemic levels in the years since 2020, with the exception of 2021, a year when D.C. filed incomplete statistics, according to Axios. The nation’s capital also experienced 12% more aggravated assaults with or without a weapon in 2024 than in 2023, along with 37% more than in 2022, according to the FBI.
Furthermore, research from the Rochester Institute of Technology shows that D.C.’s homicide rate in 2024 was the fourth highest in the nation.
President Donald Trump has endeavored to surge federal law enforcement’s footprint in D.C.’s streets and take over the local police department following the assault of an administration staffer by a mob during a carjacking on August 5. He also announced on Monday that he would deploy the National Guard to D.C.’s streets.
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