Since we're providing context here...

Prior to 2012/2013, the last time DC had less than 100 murders was 1963. I think it's slightly misleading to set the lowest homicide rate in over half a century as the point of comparison, don't you?

As a further point of context, as of June 24th of this year the murder rate was up 16% over 2021.

So the entirety of the drop in killings has come in the last two months of the year. Hell, when I first started pointing this out on December 13th, the murder rate was "only" down 9%, so it's dropped an additional 2% year-over-year in just the last half of this month.

Nationwide, homicides are down 5% this year. And guess what? Nationwide, they ALSO surged during the pandemic. It's odd to me to see so much of the discussion center around DC-specific policies when we're talking about something that happened across the country.

All of this info strongly indicates to me that, while homicides are still relatively high in comparison to the lowest number of homicides in the past fifty years, the surge that started in 2020 seems to be due to macro effects that seem to be lessening. I plan to check back in halfway through the year in 2023. I would expect to see a pretty dramatic drop in year-over-year homicides.