Violent crime in the Washington region dropped last year as part of a nationwide decrease, according to statistics released Monday by the FBI.
The biggest drop locally was in Virginia, where instances of reported violent crime plummeted 10.8 percent statewide in 2009 compared to the previous year, the FBI said. It fell 5.1 percent in the District and 5.0 percent in Maryland, both just under the national figure of a 5.3 percent drop.
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Property crime in D.C., Maryland and Virginia also dropped. The District saw a 5.8 percent decrease in property crime, Maryland went down 7.9 percent and Virginia dipped 2.7 percent. Nationwide property crime fell 4.6 percent.
The FBI’s national report came at a time when talk of crime and crime statistics have been common in the District’s mayoral race. Mayor Adrian Fenty has touted an overall improvement in crime since he’s taken office, including a historic low amount of murders, while supporters of D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray accuse him of distorting the numbers. The FBI findings apparently support Fenty’s claim that crime in general has gone down under his watch.
On Monday, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said the report doesn’t matter.
“I don’t use the FBI [Uniform Crime Reporting] statistics to draw any conclusions. … They are not reflective of true crime in D.C.,” Lanier told The Washington Examiner in an e-mail. Her answer was consistent with her response last year when the FBI reported a 2.3 increase in violent crime at a time Lanier was insisting that police cut violent crime by 5 percent.
Kristopher Baumann, chairman of the local Fraternal Order of Police and a Gray endorser, said Lanier’s response was confusing and shows that the department has not being forthright about crime numbers in this city.
“Nobody knows what the real numbers are, and nobody trusts the police department to provide accurate numbers,” Baumann said.
The FBI receives its crime numbers from the D.C. police. Lanier says the discrepancy is because the District uses two different classifications when figuring its crime totals, the D.C. Code and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting. Under the D.C. Code, a punch can be considered a simple assault and not a violent crime. Under the FBI’s definition, it’s considered an aggravated assault, a violent crime, D.C. police said.
Under the D.C. Code, police said violent crime in 2009 went down 5 percent and property crime went down 3 percent.
Staff writer Freeman Klopott contributed to this report.
