Fact check/Is Washington, D.C., among the safest cities in the country?
Fact check: Is Washington, D.C., among the safest cities in the country?
October 2, 2015
By Charles Aull
How safe is the city of Washington, D.C., in comparison to other cities throughout the country?
First-term D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser (D) said, "this city is among the safest cities anywhere in the United States," according to a local D.C. news story that ran on August 17.
Not enough data currently exists to allow for an accurate evaluation of this claim in the context of 2014 and 2015. Data sets from 2013, however, suggest that D.C. is not among the safest cities in the country—in fact, quite the opposite.
Background
Fox 5 News, the local outlet that reported Bowser's statement, included a video clip of her making the claim in a story about a deadly shooting that took place outside the Shaw-Howard U Metro Station in D.C. on August 15, 2015. The full statement was, "This city is among the safest cities anywhere in the United States, and while we are experiencing a spike in crime -- overall -- our crime statistics are flat."
We were not able to confirm when specifically Bowser made the claim—whether she said it before or after the shooting—or what the specific question was to which she was responding.
The mid-August shooting outside the Shaw-Howard U Metro, which was the focal point of the Fox 5 piece, coincided with a recent uptick in violent crimes in Washington, D.C. Peter Hermann at The Washington Post reported that just days before the shooting took place, homicides in the city were already 23 percent higher than they had been the same time last year.
D.C.'s recent history puts this increase into relief. Up until this year, the city's violent crime rate had actually been in steady decline since the mid-1990s. Homicides, for instance, have decreased by over 70 percent in the past 20 years. In 1995, 361 murders were reported in the city, compared to 105 in 2014.
But the city is not alone in seeing a surge in urban violence this year. Numerous cities throughout the country are coping with spikes. Heather Mac Donald at The Wall Street Journal wrote back in May that violent crime rates in cities such as Milwaukee, Baltimore and St. Louis—just to name a few—are also on the rise (though some, such as Max Enhrenfreund at The Washington Post's "Wonkblog," have questioned the extent of this increase).
So how does D.C.'s public safety record stack up against other cities throughout the country? Is it among the safest, and how can we find out?
Crime Data
We contacted the mayor's office for comment, but have not yet heard back. When we do, we will update this article accordingly. In the meantime, we do not know what data Bowser was using to support her claim or what exactly she meant when she said "safest."
The context of the Fox 5 article—a recent murder—indicates that by "safest," she was likely talking about violent crime as opposed to property crime. But seeing that we lack the full context, we included property crime in our analysis as well.
Here, we use the FBI’s definitions of violent crime and property crime:
- Violent Crime: "murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses which involve force or threat of force."
- Property Crime: "burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. The object of the theft-type offenses is the taking of money or property, but there is no force or threat of force against the victims."
For crime data, we turned to NeighborhoodScout.com, a data-gathering website focused on providing information on public schools, real-estate appreciation rates and crime rates for neighborhoods throughout the country. It's the type of website one might consult when thinking about moving or buying a new home, yet the methodology that it uses for gathering crime-rate data is sophisticated. It factors in population and includes reports provided to the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice by all agencies responsible for overseeing a specific jurisdiction. This means that in the case of a city like Washington, D.C., the statistics that NeighborhoodScout includes come not only from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, but also from other agencies such as the Metro Transit Police.
| The most complete national data sets available are from 2013. National data sets from 2014 and 2015 are still incomplete at the time of writing. In general, massive collections of crime data, like the comprehensive report produced by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, run on roughly 18-month delays. Moreover, while one can find statistics for individual cities on metropolitan police department websites or in media reports, definitions and reporting methods may vary from city to city and from agency to agency, making it difficult to compare cities to one another in any sort of useful or meaningful way.
Bowser's claim about how D.C.'s public safety record compares to other cities, then, can only be fully evaluated in the context of 2013. In that same vein, we should also stress that while crime rates generally change slowly over time, they can also show significant year-to-year deviations. In New York City, for example, instances of murder and non-legal manslaughter decreased by 3.5 percent from 2000 to 2001. The following year saw a 9.5 percent decrease, and the one after that saw a 1.7 percent increase. This basic trend continued until 2006 to 2007, when murders and non-legal manslaughters dropped from 596 to 496, a 16.7 percent decrease. Afterward, changes in instances of murder and non-legal manslaughter returned to the slow back-and-forth that we saw from 2000 to 2006 only to see another sharp drop between 2012 and 2014. For our purposes, this means that it is entirely possible that crimes rates in D.C. for 2014 and 2015 will be substantially different from the data that we have for 2013. We urge our readers to keep this point in mind as we work our way through the 2013 crime rates below.  |
How safe is D.C.?
We used a few different methods to compare D.C.’s public safety record with those of other cities. The first comes from NeighborhoodScout’s most recent rankings of the "Top 100 Most Dangerous Cities in the U.S," which ranks cities based solely on their violent crime rates. The list (which is misleadingly titled 2015) uses 2013 data and is restricted to cities with populations of 25,000 or more. Rates were determined at crime per 1,000 residents. Thus, a murder rate of 0.03 indicates a rate of 0.03 murders for every 1,000 residents in 2013.
With a violent crime rate of 13.00 per 1,000 residents, D.C. was ranked by NeighborhoodScout as the 29th most dangerous city in the country. It is safer than cities like Baltimore and Detroit, but more dangerous than cities like Newark and Buffalo. Camden, N.J., topped the list with a violent crime rate of 25.66.
Conversely, the safest city in the U.S., according to NeighborhoodScout, is Zionsville, Indiana, a city with a population of just over 25,000 and a violent crime rate of 0.08.
But how do D.C. crime rates compare with cities closer to its population size? What about cities with comparable population densities? And what about property crime rates?
To answer these questions, we made our own lists using data from NeighborhoodScout and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program. We included property crime rates, violent crime rates and homicide rates. All three are calculated on a per 1,000 residents basis.
The first list shows how D.C. stacks up against cities with populations between 500,000 and 800,000. As of 2013, D.C. had a population of 646,449. Click the up and down arrows on the chart below next to "Violent Crime Rate," "Property Crime Rate" and "Homicide Rate" to see how D.C. compares to the other cities on the list.
When it comes to violent crimes, D.C. clocks in with the fifth-highest rate on a list that includes 17 cities with populations between 500,000 and 800,000. Measured by homicide rate alone, it ranks fourth. On both accounts, our findings fall in line with NeighborhoodScout’s: D.C. is among the most dangerous, not the safest.
With regard to property crime, however, D.C. appears safer and occupies the middle of the list, with a rate of 48.08.
| Cities with populations between 500,000 and 800,000 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| City | Violent Crime Rate | Property Crime Rate | Homicide Rate | |
| Albuquerque, New Mexico | 8.18 | 55.80 | 0.07 | |
| Baltimore, Maryland | 14.28 | 50.52 | 0.37 | |
| Boston, Massachusetts | 8.40 | 29.45 | 0.06 | |
| Denver, Colorado | 6.30 | 36.97 | 0.06 | |
| Detroit, Michigan | 21.10 | 59.58 | 0.46 | |
| El Paso, Texas | 3.97 | 23.88 | 0.01 | |
| Fort Worth, Texas | 5.59 | 43.72 | 0.06 | |
| Fresno, California | 5.14 | 45.82 | 0.08 | |
| Louisville, Kentucky | 5.93 | 44.87 | 0.07 | |
| Memphis, Tennessee | 16.69 | 61.49 | 0.07 | |
| Milwaukee, Wisconsin | 13.70 | 45.84 | 0.17 | |
| Nashville-Davidson, Tennessee | 10.51 | 39.71 | 0.06 | |
| Oklahoma City, Oklahoma | 10.61 | 53.60 | 0.10 | |
| Portland, Oregon | 6.02 | 49.71 | 0.02 | |
| Seattle, Washington | 5.82 | 57.33 | 0.03 | |
| Tucson, Arizona | 6.84 | 67.96 | 0.10 | |
| Washington, D.C. | 13.00 | 48.08 | 0.16 | |
| Rates are per 1,000 citizens. Sources: NeighborhoodScout.com FBI Unified Crime Reports U.S. Census Bureau | ||||
Because some scholarship has pointed to a correlation between population density and crime, our second list places D.C. in a group of cities with populations over 140,000 and population densities between 7,500 and 13,000 residents per square mile. The density data comes from 2010 U.S. Census Bureau surveys. Washington, D.C., has a population density of 9,856 residents per square mile.
You can interact with the chart below the same way as the one above to see that the D.C. violent crime and homicide rates still fall on the higher end of the spectrum. Its violent crime rate is second only to Baltimore, while its murder rate is fifth out of 15. Unlike in the chart above, D.C.’s property crime rate also ranks high—in fact it's the third highest in this group of cities.
| Cities with populations over 140,000 and densities between 7,500 and 13,000 per sq/m | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| City | Violent Crime Rate | Property Crime Rate | Homicide Rate | Density |
| Alexandria, Virginia | 1.73 | 19.93 | 0.06 | 9,314 |
| Baltimore, Maryland | 14.28 | 50.52 | 0.37 | 7,671 |
| Boston, Massachusetts | 8.40 | 29.45 | 0.06 | 12,792 |
| Bridgeport, Connecticut | 9.72 | 30.32 | 0.07 | 9,029 |
| Garden Grove, California | 2.64 | 19.43 | 0.03 | 9,524 |
| Hialeah, Florida | 3.39 | 28.69 | 0.06 | 10,474 |
| Long Beach, California | 5.16 | 28.00 | 0.07 | 9,191 |
| Los Angeles, California | 4.44 | 22.78 | 0.06 | 8,092 |
| Miami, Florida | 11.91 | 50.73 | 0.17 | 11,135 |
| Newark, New Jersey | 12.99 | 33.98 | 0.40 | 11,458 |
| Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | 11.00 | 34.42 | 0.16 | 11,379 |
| Providence, Rhode Island | 6.32 | 45.82 | 0.07 | 9,676 |
| Santa Ana, California | 3.42 | 19.25 | 0.04 | 11,900 |
| Washington, D.C. | 13.00 | 48.08 | 0.16 | 9,856 |
| Yonkers, New York | 5.29 | 12.30 | 0.03 | 10,880 |
| Rates are per 1,000 citizens. Sources: NeighborhoodScout.com FBI Unified Crime Reports U.S. Census Bureau | ||||
Conclusion
Mayor Bowser stated that Washington, D.C., is "among the safest cities anywhere in the United States," according to a local D.C. news story that ran on August 17, 2015.
Currently available crime data suggests that this statement—in the form that we have it—is mostly untrue.
On the one hand, we can only fully evaluate how D.C.'s public safety record compares to other cities in the context of 2013, which means that the jury is still out on where D.C. stands in 2015. We also found that among cities with populations between 500,000 and 800,000, the city's property crime rate is about average.
On the other hand, when we looked at D.C. in three different test groups—cities with populations over 25,000, cities with populations between 500,000 and 800,000, and cities with populations over 140,000 and population densities between 7,500 and 13,000 per square mile—we found that its violent crime rate consistently ranks not only far from the safest cities in the country, but often quite close to the most dangerous. Moreover, in comparison to cities with similar densities, its property crime rate falls on the dangerous end too.
The story may change for 2014 and 2015, but the data that we currently have at our disposal suggests that D.C. is not among the safest cities in the country.
Launched in October 2015 and active through October 2018, Fact Check by Ballotpedia examined claims made by elected officials, political appointees, and political candidates at the federal, state, and local levels. We evaluated claims made by politicians of all backgrounds and affiliations, subjecting them to the same objective and neutral examination process. As of 2025, Ballotpedia staff periodically review these articles to revaluate and reaffirm our conclusions. Please email us with questions, comments, or concerns about these articles. To learn more about fact-checking, click here.
Sources
Fox 5 DC, "DC violent crime concerns continue after Shaw neighborhood shootings," August 17, 2015
The Washington Post, "'Straight up execution': Crime surges across the District," August 16, 2015
D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, "Homicide Count," accessed September 28, 2015
The Wall Street Journal, "The New Nationwide Crime Wave," May 29, 2015
The Urban Institute, "Our Changing City: Public Safety," August 2015
FBI.gov, "Crime in the United States 2013," accessed August 27, 2015
NeighborhoodScout, "Crime Rates," accessed August 27, 2015
FBI.gov, "Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January -June 2014," accessed August 27, 2015
New York City, "Citywide Seven Major Felony Offenses 2000-2014," accessed September 28, 2015
NeighborhoodScout, "FAQ on How We Rank the Top 100 Most Dangerous Cities," accessed August 27, 2015
U.S. Census Bureau, "Quick Facts: Washington, D.C.," accessed August 27, 2015
NeighborhoodScout, "Safest Cities in America - 2015," accessed September 2, 2015
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