President Trump’s deployment of the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies in D.C. has raised a storm of protests from liberals who insist that everything is just fine.
How much responsibility does D.C.’s Metro force have for things getting worse? And how much can we trust its statistical claims that things are getting better? A key variable to look for is homicide clearance rates. One way to ‘reduce’ murders is not to solve them and file them as an unknown death. Metro’s clearance rates have been steadily sinking according to its own statistics.
In 2009, D.C. had a clearance rate of 75%, by 2012, it was up to 82%, by 2019, it had dropped to 69% and by 2023, it was down to 52%, while last year it was at 60%.
What that means is that D.C. went from resolving 4 out of 5 or 3 out of 4 murders to resolving 3 out of 5 murders.
You don’t need me to tell you that means more criminals remaining on the loose.
The clearance rate for other crimes isn’t good either. D.C. has a notorious carjacking epidemic. Metro claims that there were 189 carjackings this year and only 88 had been cleared.
The clearance rate for armed robberies is below 50% (so you can see why D.C. has so many of them) and for non-fatal shootings it’s as low as 29%.
Last year, less than half of armed sexual assaults had been cleared, less than half of armed assaults had been cleared, and only 32% of armed robberies had been cleared.
No wonder things are so bad.
