The District of Columbia’s Ward 8 is on track to have a homicide rate this year of roughly 71.9 per 100,000, slightly higher than the murder rate recorded in Mexico’s Ciudad Juárez, a city that frequently appears on lists of the most dangerous places in the world, during 2024, a Washington Examiner review of public data has found.
Ward 8 includes Anacostia, widely regarded by locals as the most dangerous part of the district, as well as a section of Navy Yard, an adjacent neighborhood popular with young professionals that frequently appears in local news stories on crime, such as when armed suspects barricaded themselves inside a luxury apartment building or when a sitting congressman was carjacked at gunpoint last year. Many have claimed that crime is spilling over from Anacostia into Navy Yard, which are connected via train.
Democrats, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), have dismissed the idea that Washington is unsafe by arguing that violent crime is falling. Their statements followed President Donald Trump’s announcement this week that he will be committing federal resources to address crime in the district.
But data show that crime remains a serious problem in Washington, as does the persistent homelessness. And in some pockets of the city, the murder rate is higher than in places generally considered some of the most dangerous in the world.
To calculate Ward 8’s estimated 2025 homicide rate, the Washington Examiner collected data from the Metropolitan Police Department on all murders that have occurred in the area since Jan. 1, calculated the number of killings per day, scaled that figure up to a whole year, and used the most recent census population data to estimate the rate of offense. Ward 8 is on track to have 62 homicides this year, close to the 65 it had in 2024.
The Washington Examiner calculated the estimated 2025 homicide rates of each of the district’s eight wards using the same methodology described above. While liberal observers have correctly noted that its homicide rate is falling, crime in many cases remains higher than pre-COVID-19 levels, and some neighborhoods boast murder rates comparable to those of third-world countries or Detroit.
Ward 7, for example, has an estimated homicide rate of 41.4 per 100,000 people, which places its murder rate just above Haiti’s in 2023 and just below South Africa’s in 2024. Ward 6, the region encompassing Capitol Hill and the D.C. waterfront, meanwhile, had an estimated murder rate of 23.4 per 100,000, putting it between Venezuela and Brazil in terms of danger.
The Washington Examiner talked to multiple young professionals who live or otherwise spend extended periods of time in Washington, who uniformly complained of the chaotic atmosphere and persistent feeling of danger.
One such professional said that she has “anxiety driving [through Navy Yard] at night, having heard about all the carjackings” and that “there’s always cracked-out people shouting and snuffling near the Metro,” meaning that “there’s not too many comfortable options for women who need to travel at night.”
“The crime in Navy Yard has made me uncomfortable to do normal things, like walking to the gym, going to my car, or even coming home from work or events,” another young woman living in the area told the Washington Examiner. “On multiple occasions, I’ve been harassed by kids and adults alike and have witnessed a shooting, excessive drug use, and frequent violence right in front of my own apartment. As a young woman, I’ve lived in cities across the country, and have never felt more unsafe or witnessed greater security and safety negligence in my life.”
A university student told the Washington Examiner that he could not imagine living in Navy Yard after graduation, given the persistent low-level lawlessness in the area.
“The crime is entirely committed by urban youth, some from D.C. proper but mostly from Maryland,” a third young professional told the Washington Examiner. “They have no regard for the well-being of others and act with complete impunity, knowing they will never face consequences. We’re talking about children, mostly in their early teenage years, who violently molest law-abiding citizens. A 15-year-old kid got shot in the chest by one of his peers this past spring. The tragedy is that this is not a unique phenomenon.”
Not even the wealthiest wards managed a homicide rate below what Canada or the European Union experienced in 2024. Ward 3, which contains American University, came the closest with an estimated homicide rate of 4.2 per 100,000.
These figures may actually understate the true risk of homicide in Washington, as the district has access to far better emergency trauma care than is commonly available in developing nations. This means that a shooting that would be fatal in Cape Town may be survivable at a U.S. hospital. Indeed, some research papers suggest that medical advancements and access to quality emergency care contribute to reduced homicide deaths.
Further, discrepancies between the National Crime Victimization Survey and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program lead critics to believe that victims may not be reporting some offenses to the police, making it difficult to parse the true prevalence of a given crime. Murders, however, are high-stakes offenses that rarely go unreported.
As Trump attempts to assume greater federal control over law enforcement in the district, its leaders have offered up relatively weak resistance.
Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, conceded that she does not have legal control of the D.C. National Guard and said “the fact that we have more law enforcement presence in neighborhoods … you know, that may be positive.” She did, however, call the president’s move “unsettling and unprecedented.”
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“The President taking over local control of MPD & putting the US military onto the streets of DC under the guise of public safety is wrong,” wrote Councilman Charles Allen, a Democrat who faced a recall effort over claims that his push to reduce police funding led to an increase in crime. “It’s an extreme, outrageous, and dangerous move for our city and the safety of all our residents.”
A man was shot and killed in Northwest Washington hours after Allen’s statement on Monday.