DC violence has grown far more deadly, despite Dems claiming 30-year low

“You have less chance of being victimized, but if you are victimized, you have more of a chance of dying,” John Jay adjunct lecturer Jillian Snider, a retired New York Police Department officer, told Fox News Digital Tuesday of violent crime trends in the nation’s capital. 

Snider was referring to a report published by the Council on Criminal Justice in July, which studied violent crime data of 17 large U.S. cities between 2018 and 2024, specifically diving into the lethality of violent crimes in those cities. It found Washington, D.C., had the highest lethality level out of the group – which included cities such as Baltimore and Chicago – at a 38% increase in lethality in 2024 compared with 2018. 

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When asked about some Democrats touting that crime has fallen to a 30-year-low, Snider argued that it’s not “fair” to compare any city in 2025 to one in the 1990s.

“The ‘90s were a shaky time in most urban and metropolitan areas,” she said. “We were coming out of the crack epidemic. We were coming out of economic instability from the late ’80s. And then the ’90s, we saw like this revolutionary policing, this broken windows policing, this now hot-spot policing, this CompStat-driven era.” 

“I don’t think that any agency today in 2025 should be saying, like, ‘Oh, we’re doing so much better than we were in 1995,'” she continued. “It’s a completely different world than it was in 1995. You have different demographics in different areas. You have different population counts in different areas.” 

The U.S. was rocked by violent crime waves from coast-to-coast in 2020 and the subsequent years, when the pandemic upended day-to-day life with lockdown orders and social justice protests and riots broke out in major cities nationwide. The FBI logged a nearly 30% increase in murders compared to the year prior, marking the largest single-year increase in killings since the agency began tracking the crimes.

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“Everyone should be celebrating that crime is falling,” Snider said. “But at the same time, we don’t have the full picture: Why is crime more deadly than it once was?” 

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Snider explained that violent crimes decreasing while lethality increases is attributable to a handful of variables, including gang-related crimes. 

“D.C. is known for having gangs and crews, and I know that there have been reports of increased juvenile-related crime,” Snider said, pointing to a surge that began in 2021 as youths committed violent carjackings. “If you see higher gang or crew-related activity that potentially is using weapons, obviously that’s where you’re going to see more serious physical injury or death. So that’s one of the bigger attributes also.”

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Snider added that she understands the Trump administration’s rationale for federalizing the police force, but underscored the importance of having local police lead their jurisdiction as they understand the neighborhoods they patrol, the community and where crime lurks. Snider argued the administration should consider delivering federal funds to bolster local police departments’ abilities to recruit and retain officers. 

“Police presence in uniform does deter crime,” she said. “You have two agents or two officers standing on a street corner, you’re not going to see a lot of people getting their purses snatched, you’re not gonna see a lot of people selling drugs on the corner, you’re not gonna see a lot of people getting carjacked. But after the surge is over and after this National Guard deployment has withdrawn, what does that leave the MPD with?”