> DC is safe. The 2023 spike was an anomaly and it has been falling sharply in 2024 and 2025, but even in that year it was highly focused on specific groups.
I feel like when you say “DC is safe” you mean “DC is safe for affluent white/asian people who stay in the designated safe zones.” Because it’s not safe for the majority of the people who don’t live in those areas.
Objectively speaking, DC’s 27 homicides per 100k people in 2024 is almost double what it was in 2012. If actually started going back up before the pandemic. And in absolute terms, DC has about 8 times the homicide rate of a relatively safe american city like new york or san diego.
> If you weren't part of a gang or making yourself an easy target for a mugging out drunk
It’s ultimately driven by gangs, but most people killed aren’t gang members per se. They’re gang adjacent, or siblings or friends who get caught up in the gang wars. Also, the gangs aggressively recruit young men in the neighborhoods where they operate. It’s very “you’re with us or against us.”
> go to any of these SUPER SCARY neighborhoods and it's like people waiting for the bus, moms jogging by with strollers, and old people hanging out on porches.
I’ve lived in downtown Baltimore, DC, and Wilmington Delaware. I know how cities work. But the violence is a constant for the people who live there. We got to know an Indian family who had a great Indian restaurant in the ghetto in Wilmington, which has a similar homicide rate to DC. Yeah, on any given day you won’t see someone get murdered. But they had someone get killed on the street outside their restaurant. And EMTs wouldn’t come for hours because they were worried about getting caught in a gang firefight. Then another person got shot in the street near my wife’s office at 5 am waiting for the Nike Store to open. That was just in one year. Imagine growing up there and not being rich each to isolate yourself from the violence.
> I feel like when you say “DC is safe” you mean “DC is safe for affluent white/asian people who stay in the designated safe zones.” Because it’s not safe for the majority of the people who don’t live in those areas.
It’s the opposite: there are a handful of small hotspots which are less safe, but even those aren’t that bad. I live in a fairly mixed neighborhood (none of my immediate neighbors are white, 20% of the ward earn less than $50k, etc.) and it’s just not something people are worried about in daily life.
There is a hotspot about ¾ mile away where we had a couple of gang members kill each other. That’s not great, of course, but it’s literally one building and behind closed doors (the police arrested the perps from Maryland last year, and it’s been quiet since). Nobody else in the neighborhood is changing their plans, local businesses aren’t affected, etc. If you go by in the evening, it’s people walking dogs and kids playing, not hiding inside with the doors locked.
Again, there are real problems and I wholly support the continued programs to solve them, but the imagery being used to claim an emergency is a work of fiction. If they wanted to do something about crime, they’d start taking cars away from unsafe drivers as that’s far more likely to be harmful to most residents here.
I feel like when you say “DC is safe” you mean “DC is safe for affluent white/asian people who stay in the designated safe zones.” Because it’s not safe for the majority of the people who don’t live in those areas.
Objectively speaking, DC’s 27 homicides per 100k people in 2024 is almost double what it was in 2012. If actually started going back up before the pandemic. And in absolute terms, DC has about 8 times the homicide rate of a relatively safe american city like new york or san diego.
> If you weren't part of a gang or making yourself an easy target for a mugging out drunk
It’s ultimately driven by gangs, but most people killed aren’t gang members per se. They’re gang adjacent, or siblings or friends who get caught up in the gang wars. Also, the gangs aggressively recruit young men in the neighborhoods where they operate. It’s very “you’re with us or against us.”
> go to any of these SUPER SCARY neighborhoods and it's like people waiting for the bus, moms jogging by with strollers, and old people hanging out on porches.
I’ve lived in downtown Baltimore, DC, and Wilmington Delaware. I know how cities work. But the violence is a constant for the people who live there. We got to know an Indian family who had a great Indian restaurant in the ghetto in Wilmington, which has a similar homicide rate to DC. Yeah, on any given day you won’t see someone get murdered. But they had someone get killed on the street outside their restaurant. And EMTs wouldn’t come for hours because they were worried about getting caught in a gang firefight. Then another person got shot in the street near my wife’s office at 5 am waiting for the Nike Store to open. That was just in one year. Imagine growing up there and not being rich each to isolate yourself from the violence.