Halfway through the year, the District of Columbia is on pace to have the fewest homicides since the mid-1960s, when the city earned the nickname “Murder Capital on the Potomac.”
Through the first six months, the city recorded 66 homicides, 21 percent less than the first half of last year. If the trend holds, the District would end up with 132 slayings, the fewest since 1964, when there were also 132 homicides.
“Of course, we are glad that the number of murders have gone down, but we couldn’t do it without the assistance of the public and the media,” said spokesman Officer Israel James.
At this time last year, the city had 83 homicides, according to police.
Police remain cautious about the trend because it can turn around during a violent month. In each of the previous two years, the District was doing better than the previous year only to see more killings than the year before. After a decade of falling homicide rates, the number rose in 2007 from 169 killings to 181 and again in 2008 to 186.
The District last year wound up with the third highest homicide rate of all major U.S. cities, behind only Baltimore and Detroit, with 31 homicides per 100,000 residents.
The number of killings around the District had dropped precipitously since the deadly crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1991, the District suffered 479 killings alone. But, beginning in 1993, the number of homicides in the District dropped each year until 2007.
Police pointed out that homicide detectives are closing their cases at a high rate. So far, police have closed 72 percent of all homicide cases this year. The national average of comparably sized cities on homicide closures is 54 percent, police said.
