How does DC’s homicide rate compare with other countries?
President Donald Trump said Washington, D.C.’s homicide rate is higher than “the worst places on Earth.”
At an Aug. 11 press conference announcing a federal government takeover of the district’s Metropolitan Police Department and the deployment of National Guard troops to the nation’s capital, Trump displayed several charts comparing D.C.’s homicide rate with cities around the world.
“The murder rate in Washington today is higher than that of Bogotá, Colombia, Mexico City, some of the places that you hear about as being the worst places on Earth,” Trump said.
“We have DC: 41 per 100,000. No.1 that we can find anywhere in the world,” Trump said, holding up a chart comparing homicide rates across capital cities. “Other cities are pretty bad, but they’re not as bad as that.”
The chart Trump displayed was first shared Aug. 6 on Fox News’ “The Will Cain Show.” Trump didn’t mention that the data in it is from 2023. Since then, the district’s homicide rate has fallen considerably. The rate was not the worst in the world — then or now.
In 2023, at least 49 other cities in the world had higher homicide rates.
Related stories
Related Knowledge Center: Democracy and politics
News organizations are scrambling to find a coverage approach that adequately informs the American public about the country’s slide from democracy to authoritarian rule.
Related Knowledge Center: Fact-checking and its detractors
Fact-checking has become a familiar tool for political reporters to hold office-holders and candidates accountable. But critics ask if fact-checkers sometimes miss the forest for the trees, and if the practice often struggles with false equivalency the way conventional political coverage does.