D.C. Homicide Totals 1975-2010

Homicide statistics have often been bandied about as an easily digestible, if flawed, metric of how well a mayor has battled crime during a given administration. Not surprisingly, the homicide watch in D.C. — a city where, at one point in the late 1980s and early 90s, more than 400 people were being murdered every year — has gotten a lot of attention during outgoing Mayor Adrian Fenty’s term. Police Chief Cathy Lanier stoked additional interest in the number by proclaiming her goal to reduce the city’s homicide total to under 100.

Lanier and Fenty didn’t reach that goal during the mayor’s term. But that hasn’t stopped the media from proclaiming Fenty’s excellent performance in tamping down the homicide count during his nearly four years in office. “Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) is on track to leave office Jan 2. having just achieved the fewest yearly number of homicides in decades,” wrote Tim Craig on The Washington Post’s D.C. Wire blog on November 10, to quote but one example. It got us to thinking: Was Mayor Fenty really more successful at whittling down homicides than his predecessors?

The PDF chart above depicts the number of homicides per year since Walter Washington first assumed the role of mayor of the District of Columbia in 1975. Anyone familiar with the recent history of the city should find few surprises — the homicide rate skyrocketed as the crack epidemic hit the area in the late 1980s but has been on a somewhat steady decline since the mid-90s. It is true that Fenty, this year, will likely oversee the city’s lowest number of homicides since Washington took office. But another look at the numbers shows that Fenty’s performance might not be as unprecedented as some media outlets would have you believe.