Anonymous wrote:Homicide is down 11 percent in 2022 over 2021 year-to-date. Total violent crime is down 7 over 2021 year-to-date (though in 2021, violent crime was up 3 percent over 2020, which is alarming).
But in 1999 — the last year of the 1990s, obviously, but also the low point of crime for the decade — there were 8,448 violent crimes in D.C. In 2021, there were 4,117, and so far this year, there have been 3,746.
Property crime is down 4 percent year-to-date compared to 2021, but even there, 1999 saw 33,420 property crimes in D.C., and so far this year, there've been 22,288.
So it's clearly not accurate to say crime is approaching '90s levels here, if violent crime is half what the BEST year of the 1990s had and property crimes are down by about a third. That's not even getting into the RATES of all those crimes, which were even higher than the raw numbers, since in 1999, D.C.'s population was 519,000, compared to about 640,000 now.
(Sources:
https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/district-crime-data-glance and
https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/dccrime.htm)