In the nearly three weeks since President Trump deployed federal troops and law enforcement agents throughout Washington, D.C., a CBS News analysis of crime data shows violent crime is down in Washington by almost half when compared to the same 19 days in 2024.
The analysis, reviewing every crime incident reported to the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department from Aug. 7 through Aug. 25, also shows violent crime is down in comparison to the five-year average for the same dates.
Beyond violent crime, reported burglaries also are down 48% and car thefts have fallen 36%.
Identifying the specific causes of changes in criminal activity is complex because it can be driven by many factors – and local police data was already showing that reported crimes were trending downward in Washington prior to the president’s action.
Violent crime, for example, in the two weeks prior to Aug. 7, was down about 20% already from the same period in prior years, according to the MPD data.
Where are federal troops and law enforcement deployed?
CBS News also has been examining where federal troops and law enforcement are deployed in relation to crime incidents.
While some news reports and pundits suggested the deployments may have been in lower-crime areas, CBS News’ analysis of the locations of reported crimes in 2025 indicates that the federal government deployed troops and other federal law enforcement agents mostly in areas with higher – and often much higher – rates of crime, violent crime and gun crime than the average neighborhood across the city.
The analysis examines the location of every crime incident within a half mile of the locations where CBS News verified that federal troops or law enforcement agents are assigned. That was compared to crime incidents within a half-mile of hundreds of other points covering the district.
Compared to neighborhoods citywide within a half mile of the 30 federal deployment locations, the concentration of overall crime incidents was nearly three times higher than the citywide average.
Additionally, violent crimes – including homicides, assaults with a weapon, sexual assaults and robberies, as well as any crime committed with a firearm – were more than twice as high, and crimes involving guns were nearly twice as high near deployment areas.
Several federal deployment locations along U Street, NW, were in areas where the number of gun crimes within a half mile of those deployments was higher than more than 90% of areas citywide.
There are other areas of the city with high concentrations of crime where CBS News has not been able to verify sightings of troops or federal law enforcement deployments – primarily most of the neighborhoods southeast of the Anacostia River. The White House has reported arrests being made in those areas, but without releasing specifics about precise locations.
Also, not every deployment is the same. On the National Mall, amid the monuments, museums and other federal grounds, the deployments verified by CBS News Confirmed were primarily National Guard. But the Guard was not just on and around the Mall. At least 10 Guard deployments were scattered at subway stations and other locations across the city – mixed in with deployments of other federal law enforcement agents. You can see the different deployments CBS News has verified so far in this map.
Brianne Nadeau is a member of the District of Columbia Council who represents a community with a heavy presence of federal agents. She said they’re scaring people away.
“Some businesses aren’t even opening,” she said. “Either they don’t have staff coming or they’re concerned about opening for their customers. We have daycares that are afraid to take the kids out to the park because they’re afraid their staff will be picked up by ICE. I mean, it’s very quiet, and not just because it’s summer.”
But Leroy Thorpe, who leads a neighborhood crime watch program in Washington D.C.’s Shaw neighborhood, has applauded the National Guard deployment.
“Absolutely it helps,” Thorpe told CBS News. “The subway poses a public safety issue for law-abiding citizens who are going to — or coming from — work.”
What the White House is saying
A White House official says that since the start of the operation on Aug. 7, more than 1,094 arrests have been made, including eight known gang members with affiliation to either MS-13 or Tren de Aragua, and 115 firearms have been seized.
On the night of Aug. 25, there were a total of 87 arrests, 39 of which were undocumented immigrants with prior arrests on a range of charges from simple assault to felony robbery, according to the official, and four illegal firearms were seized. To date, 49 homeless encampments have been cleared by multi-agency teams.
The official said arrests were made by multi-agency teams, including the MPD and various federal agency officers deployed to promote public safety as part of the president’s agenda to quash crime.
Mr. Trump in a meeting on Aug. 26, with members of his Cabinet, reiterated his view that MPD’s crime data is “phony” and called on Attorney General Pam Bondi “to do something about it”.
“What they did is they issued numbers – it’s the best in 30 years. Not the best. It’s the worst. It’s the worst. It’s much worse. And they gave phony numbers,” Mr. Trump said. He offered no proof to support his claim about the numbers.
Touting the administration’s operation in the District, the president said Washington, D.C., is “very safe right now.”
“Crime in D.C., was the worst ever in history,” Mr. Trump said. “And now, over the last 13 days, we’ve worked so hard, we’ve taken so many. There are many left, but we’ve taken so many criminals – over 1,000.”
Mr. Trump has floated the idea of deploying the National Guard to Chicago, though he has not made a decision about whether to do so.
For comparison, CBS News’ review of district police arrest records for the same days in previous years show a similar pace of arrests this year: the district police data show 1,071 arrests for the same period of days in 2024. The data document 856 arrests during that period in 2023, 800 in 2022, 755 in 2021 and 734 in 2020.
The National Guard’s role in D.C.
In addition to the more than 900 members of the D.C. National Guard who are deployed across the district, six Republican governors – West Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee – have sent upwards of 1,300 combined additional members of their states’ National Guard to the nation’s capital.
The National Guard footprint thus far has been mostly limited to protecting federal buildings and parks, as well as patrolling 10 Metro stations in the district, but in recent days the service members started to assist with “beautification” across the district, assisting in “restoration projects” in D.C.’s federal parks, according to a Joint Task Force D.C. spokesperson.
A spokesperson for the Joint Task Force also told CBS News on Aug. 24, that the defense secretary had directed National Guard members deployed to D.C. to begin carrying their assigned service weapon. A military official said likely fewer than 50 were to be armed starting that night. This was a reversal from earlier in the month, when a Defense Department official told CBS News that deployed Guard members would not be armed, at the request of local law enforcement partners. The official also said at the time they would not have weapons in their vehicles.
Local leaders, including D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, have questioned the increase in National Guard members.
“The numbers on the ground in the District don’t support a thousand people from other states coming to Washington, D.C.,” Bowser said at a press conference on Aug. 18, adding that she does not have control over the city’s National Guard — that authority lies with the president.
The district is typically policed through local and federal law enforcement agencies.
The Metropolitan Police Department, the city’s primary law enforcement agency, had 3,181 sworn members as of Aug. 15, according to a department spokesperson. The Metro Transit Police Department, which oversees security for the district’s transit systems, has 482 police officers, the department said.
The U.S. Capitol Police, responsible for security at the Capitol complex and its grounds, employs nearly 2,300 sworn officers and about 500 civilian staff members, the agency said.
The U.S. Park Police officers cover federal parks, including the National Mall. The chairman of the union representing the U.S. Park Police told D.C. radio station WTOP there are 294 officers covering the D.C. area.
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