As Trump touts D.C. arrests, experts caution they’re not the best indicator of public safety

The Trump administration announced Friday that it has arrested more than 700 people in Washington, D.C., as part of the president’s mission to crack down on crime in the nation’s capital.

U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro has frequently pushed for those who commit crimes to face harsher punishments. During a visit Thursday with federal law enforcement and National Guard troops deployed in the district, with President Trump by her side, she pledged to ensure arrests lead to charges.

“I am making sure we back the blue to the hilt. Every arrest you make, we’re going to the longest way to make sure that we charge in those cases,” Pirro told the group.

Here’s what to know about those arrest numbers, and what conclusions can — and cannot — be drawn from them.

What do we know about who has been arrested?

According to the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, there were about 800 arrests in the first 10 days of the federal takeover, which represents about 25% more arrests compared to the same period last year and a nearly 40% increase over the same period in 2023. It remains unclear how much overlap there is in White House and D.C. police arrest data. No definitive answer has been given by either.

NPR has requested a full list of names of the people who have been arrested from both MPD and the Trump administration. Neither has provided it. Without that information, the public won’t know the full picture of who has been arrested or why, and whether the individuals remain in custody.

It’s also unclear which agency made these arrests.

A White House official, who was not authorized to share data publicly, indicated to NPR that about 40% of arrests during the initiative have been immigration-related; of the non-immigration arrests, that official said that between Aug. 9 and Aug. 17, about half occurred in the areas of Washington with the highest violent crime rates. NPR was not able to independently confirm those assertions.

“My first question is, where are the receipts on these arrests?” says Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, deputy project director on policing at the ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project. “There are still a lot of questions about what happens next to understand if they were valid arrests, if these were arrests where people’s rights were being violated and they shouldn’t have been arrested in the first place.”

What can arrests tell us about public safety?

Criminal justice experts caution that it’s difficult to draw any conclusions about public safety from arrests. They aren’t necessarily an indicator of crime, and typically only a portion of arrests lead to criminal charges. An even smaller number lead to convictions.

Police experts often use the term “flooding the zone” for this type of law enforcement strategy, and they say it can lead to more arrests simply because officers are looking for people to arrest.

“You might arrest someone for getting too close to a police officer. And then you can call it assault. You might arrest someone who is protesting but ends up on private property and then you call it trespassing,” says Tahir Duckett, executive director of the Center for Innovations in Community Safety at Georgetown Law. “So these are all choices, and those choices oftentimes reflect the priority of a law enforcement agency.”

There have been instances during the federal takeover in D.C. that have resulted in arrests that would not have otherwise happened. Many people, for instance, watched the viral video of a man throwing a sandwich at a federal agent. He’s now facing a federal assault charge.

Does the presence of more law enforcement deter crime?

According to the White House official, there have been more than 2,000 federal officers involved in this crackdown on recent nights. That’s a substantial increase in force, even in a city that has one of the highest numbers of police officers per capita in the country.

The White House has said the National Guard and the federal officers deployed in this crackdown are there to deter violent crime with a visible law enforcement presence.

Policing experts say officer visibility, like a squad car sitting on a corner, can deter crime, but the effect is often short-lived. Additionally, they say, there is a risk of harm in adding so many more officers to a small area.

“The more police and public interact, the more police uses of force there are going to be. This could be forcing somebody into handcuffs. It could be taking them to the ground. It could be something more serious,” says John Roman, who directs the Center on Public Safety and Justice at NORC, a research group at the University of Chicago. “When you create a pressure cooker environment, you’re adding an additional element, and then you can increase that number even higher.”

NPR’s Luke Garrett contributed reporting.