President Donald Trump’s threat to federalize Washington, D.C., should it fail to effectively deal with violent crime, comes as the city’s crime statistics show the American capital is less safe than many of the major cities of Latin America.
Washington, D.C., recorded 187 homicides in 2024 in a population of roughly 702,000. That total represents a murder rate of 26.6 per 100,000. That figure marked a 32% drop from 2023’s 274, when the rate was roughly 41 per 100,000.
Data from the Heritage Foundation shows that in 2023, D.C. had a homicide rate of 40.9 homicides per 100,000 residents and ranked fourth worst in the nation, behind only New Orleans (53.8), St. Louis (53.7), and Detroit (40.9).
“If D.C. were a state, it would have the highest homicide rate of any state in the United States,” the conservative think-tank added.
By way of comparison, the 2023 rate for Mexico City stood at about 8 per 100,000. Bogota, Colombia boasted a rate of 14 per 100,000 in 2023. Quito, Ecuador boasted a rate of 45 per 100,000, just slightly higher than D.C. in that year.
Hellbound and Down 