Former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund says rising violent crime in Washington, D.C., justifies President Donald Trump’s decision to place the city’s police department under federal control and deploy the National Guard. Speaking on Breitbart News Daily, Sund said D.C.’s homicide rate remains far above historic lows despite a recent dip from last year’s peak.
Sund described Trump as “very, very detail-oriented,” noting that the president has been known to personally spot and report issues like broken streetlights or graffiti. He said it was unsurprising that Trump would act after seeing gangs of youth take over areas like Navy Yard, just blocks from the Capitol and White House.
“This isn’t new—we did this in the early ’90s when I was with D.C. police, and we drove down homicide rates,” Sund said. He recalled that between 2010 and 2014, homicides hovered around 100–170 per year under Chief Cathy Lanier. By contrast, 2023 saw 274 homicides, a 60% increase from those earlier years.
Sund pushed back on D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s claims that crime is dropping, arguing that the decline from 2023 to 2024 still leaves rates roughly double what they were a decade ago. He also warned that crime has spread beyond historically dangerous neighborhoods into wider areas of the city.
The former chief urged a strong focus on violent and repeat offenders, particularly juveniles, criticizing the city’s historically lenient approach to youth crime. “If you don’t begin to address behavior at a young age, it’s just going to get worse,” he said, adding that D.C.’s homicide rate is now “five to six times that of any other major city in the United States.”
