As Washington crime spikes, DOJ vows to send more resources to reeling city

The Justice Department will commit extra resources to assist law enforcement in Washington after the district saw a 40% increase in violent crime and 35% increase in homicides last year.

In an announcement on Friday, the department said the new resources will also target carjacking, which increased 82% in Washington in 2023.

“Last year, we saw an encouraging decline in violent crime in many parts of the country, but there is much more work to do — including here in the District of Columbia," said Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The announcement comes after USA TODAY reported earlier this week that the nation's capital has seen a troubling rise in homicides despite decreases in big cities across the U.S. It has been a burgeoning problem that other news organizations have covered as well. 

In 2023, the nation's capital saw 274 homicides, the most in the district since 1997. Amidst the rise (there were 203 homicides in 2022), the homicide clearance rate of the local Metropolitan Police Department dropped 10 percentage points to 52%.

Justice Department spokesperson Peter Carr declined to say whether the announcement came in response to the wave of violent crime. The initiative, he said, is part of a departmentwide strategy launched in May of 2021 to address the pandemic-era spike in violent crime, and builds on similar initiatives in Houston and Memphis, Tennessee.

Homicides dropped in the country's five largest cities last year, including in Houston, where they declined by 20%, according to data from individual police departments. Memphis, like Washington, is an outlier, counting a record 398 homicides in 2023, according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal, part of the USA TODAY network.

MPD recovered 3,135 firearms in 2023 and 3,152 guns in 2022. The previous three years each saw roughly 2,300 guns recovered.

Carjackings and gun assaults also dropped by 3% and 7% respectively in 11 cities studied by the Council on Criminal Justice in a review of nationwide crime trends last year. Carjacking dropped 5% on average in 10 cities studied. The cities studied included major cities like Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

As part of the new plan, the department will establish a Gun Violence Analytic Cell to pursue federal investigations into violent crime and carjacking in Washington using data analytics. The unit will be staffed with agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Drug Enforcement Agency, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

More:Homicide rates dropped in big cities. Why has the nation's capital seen a troubling rise?

The initiative will also divert federal prosecutors from the Justice Department's Criminal Division to work on cases in Washington. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia said it would also assign more prosecutors from District of Columbia Superior Court to take on carjacking and firearm cases.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew M. Graves faced a maelstrom of criticism after internal reports showed his office pressed charges in just one third of arrests in 2022. The office's prosecution rate rose to 44% in fiscal year 2023 after officials scrambled to contain the outcry.

Carr declined to comment on the number of agents and prosecutors that would be diverted or how much funding would go toward the new initiatives.

Cybele Mayes-Osterman is a breaking news reporter for USA Today. Reach her on email at [email protected]. Follow her on X @CybeleMO.