President Donald Trump declared a crime emergency in D.C. and deployed the National Guard on August 11, 2025, launching the Make D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force. The initial emergency order expired in September 2025, but the Guard presence was extended through the end of 2026 and then again to Inauguration Day 2029.
And the endeavor is not cheap – The Congressional Budget Office put the D.C. deployment at $223 million from August through December 2025, with each additional month costing about $55 million at roughly 2,950 troops. Stars and Stripes puts the cumulative bill from August 2025 through this September at more than $700 million.
So, has the National Guard brought down violent crime down in DC?
Probably not.
Has it impacted other areas of crime?
Maybe.
Here’s what the data shows.
Crime in D.C. is down overall, but the decline started two years before the troops arrived — and the one category the Guard was sent to stop hasn’t moved. Moreover, crime is significantly down across the U.S. and in cities where no troops were deployed. For instance, nearby Baltimore recorded just 7 homicides in July 2026, representing the lowest monthly total for that month on record.
What the data shows
Metropolitan Police Department year-to-date figures show homicides at 71 versus 102 at this point last year, a 30% drop, with overall crime down about 20%. The property-crime numbers are the strongest: motor vehicle theft down 53%, theft from auto down 37%, total property crime down 23%, and carjackings down 63% in the first half of the year.
And while the homicide rate, so far, is down from last year, the violent crime rate, despite being among the lowest at this time of year since the 1960s, is actually up 3% year over year, driven by a 40%-plus jump in assaults with a dangerous weapon.
Keep in mind, violent is more than homicides.
The trend line problem
D.C. homicides went 274 in 2023, 187 in 2024, 127 in 2025 — two consecutive 32% drops, the first entirely before Trump took office. And violent crime was already at a 30-year low when the Guard deployed in August 2025. Most of the 33% homicide decline the White House cites for 2026 covers months that were “nearly entirely before the National Guard deployment.”
Fact: The Council on Criminal Justice’s mid-year report found homicides down 18% in the first half of 2026 across 30 large cities — 215 fewer killings — and 51% below the 2022 peak, putting the national rate on track for the lowest level in at least 126 years. Nine of 13 tracked offenses fell.
Back to D.C…
What the studies found
The Niskanen Center, a libertarian-rooted think tank, credits the deployment with roughly a 24% reduction in property crime — package theft, car break-ins — but found the deployment has had no discernible effect on violent crime, concluding it was “a blunt and expensive instrument.”
And the same conclusion was reached by a study conducted by the Center for American Progress.
The most damning detail: Guard members appear in only about 1.3% of criminal cases filed in D.C. Superior Court, more often as victims than as arresting personnel, and court records show no Guard activity in the neighborhoods accounting for 82% of the city’s murders over five years.
The administration’s case
The White House credits its Safe and Beautiful Task Force with 16,000-plus arrests, nearly 2,000 illegal firearms seized, 35 homicide suspects and 100-plus gang members taken in. The FBI puts its own share at 6,121 arrests. Federal prosecutions are up 67%.
