Trump celebrates security in Washington and praises death penalty – rightly so?

On Tuesday shortly after midnight, the police found a 31-year-old man in Washington DC with a gunshot wound. He died of his injuries in the hospital. The search for the perpetrator is still running. It was the first murder in the state capital for twelve days.

Donald Trump attributes the time to the controversial commitment of the National Guard in Washington, which he ordered. The US President had praised himself on the day before the murder and grabbed a superlative: “In the past eleven days we had no murders, for the first time in years.” The statement was promptly spread by Trump’s followers. However, the claim is wrong.

In fact, twelve days without a fatality in DC are relatively much. It is not often spared by deadly crimes. However, there has been a longer period of time this year: According to the police data, which the “Washington Post” reports, no murder was carried out at the end of February/early March in a row. This was the longest period of time in six years. According to the report, there was also a ten -day period without murder this year and the year before.

Even if Trump’s claim in the form does not apply: the conclusion that the use of the National Guard in Washington DC has reduced crime in the city. The police officers show that since the troops were posted on August 11, only half as many violent crimes have been committed as in the same period of the previous year. Overall, crime has decreased by 20 percent since then. However, the crime rate was declining even before the National Guard was used – albeit not that strong. However, Trump claims without evidence that Washington Mayor Muriel would “deliver false and extremely inaccurate crime numbers”.

The President of the National Guard had sent the US President to Washington to get the supposedly outline crime under control there. In fact, the statistics of the police show a significant decline in violent crimes between 2023 and 2024, after an increase during corona pandemic. At a cabinet meeting, Trump addressed another drastic measure: he wanted to reintroduce the death penalty in the US capital. “If someone kills someone in the capital Washington DC, we will call for the death penalty,” said Trump. This is a “very effective prevention measure”.

The fact that the death penalty has a deterrent effect and prevents violent crimes is repeatedly brought up as an argument by its supporters. But here, too, both research and numbers speak a different language. The “Death Penalty Information Center” has been evaluating the official figures of the FBI for many years and concludes that there are even more murders in US states with the death penalty than in those who have abolished the death penalty. In some years, the murder rate was even more than 40 percent higher.

The death penalty was abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, and a moratorium applies in three other countries. Washington DC decided in 1981, and no one had been executed there since 1957.

Trump is a great advocate of the death penalty and had already announced in the election campaign to work for more executions at the federal level.