In the weeks after President Trump declared a crime emergency in Washington, D.C., directing a surge of federal law enforcement there, the tourists at a popular game store near the Capitol thinned. The restaurant workers in a nighttime soccer league canceled their season. The line at a weekly food pantry shrank. Sidewalk traffic in the Columbia Heights neighborhood dropped off. Bike-share trips across the city dipped.
Crime in the city has declined over this same time, more sharply than the improvements Washington was already experiencing this year. But other kinds of activity have also retreated, beyond what late summer would normally bring. If the aggressive show of force has had a deterrent effect on crime, it appears to have deterred entirely normal aspects of city life, too.
Washington streets are by no means empty, and some measures of activity, such as public transit ridership, have shown little change. Most residents have gone to work and their children back to school following typical routines. But other data and interviews suggest that the presence of federal agents and National Guard troops has muted the city’s social life, street culture, restaurant scene and immigrant enclaves — some of what residents say makes the city vibrant.
In some neighborhoods known for their lively streets, for instance, cellphone data showed distinctly less activity, including from pedestrians or people passing through by car, after the surge began:
“We are not functioning like a healthy city right now,” said Brianne K. Nadeau, a district council member who represents Columbia Heights, home to many Hispanic residents. She and others repeatedly mentioned echoes of the pandemic: parents seeking virtual learning, restaurant staff needing car rides to avoid mass transit, would-be diners choosing instead to stay home.
To understand the scale of this effect, we sought data from a variety of sources tracking activity in Washington and spoke with more than 30 nonprofits, business owners, churches, restaurants and civic groups.
Some data showed no obvious pattern (a traffic congestion measure, for one). Some were harder to decipher (the Nationals’ ballpark attendance is down almost 10 percent since the first week of August, but the team is also in last place). Other metrics, however, including from cellphone data, restaurants and social service providers, show a shift in the city’s normal patterns.
The White House has declared the operation a success with the federal emergency expiring this week, ending, primarily, the president’s direct influence over the city’s Metropolitan Police Department.
“In a short period of time, President Trump has transformed D.C. from a crime-ridden mess into a beautiful, clean, safe city,” a White House spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, said in a statement. “It will be safer for residents, visitors and businesses. Anyone in their right mind would celebrate this success, except for the criminals who have been stopped by this crime crackdown.”
Mayor Muriel Bowser has praised the falling crime, too. But to other residents, the president’s talk of “liberating” Washington has been at odds with their unease navigating police checkpoints, National Guard troops in the city’s metro system and immigration raids on city streets.
“That’s a slap in the face to anybody who’s ever needed liberation — to say that this is that,” said the Rev. William Young, the pastor at Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ in Ward 8, the part of the city most plagued by violence.
A clear change in mid-August
Washington started to come under strain earlier this year, months before the president declared a crime emergency, with international tourism down and federal workplaces shedding jobs. Fears in immigrant communities were also already mounting.
But after Aug. 11, there was a clear change. Agents from numerous federal agencies, often masked or in unmarked gear, became common sights alongside local police at traffic stops and on patrols. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids expanded, targeting delivery drivers and workers at bus stops. All told, the White House says the effort has led to more than 2,400 arrests, including hundreds of undocumented immigrants. About 2,300 National Guard troops have also deployed in the city.
One sign that fewer people were moving around D.C. as this happened appears in the city’s bike-share data. After the surge started, the bike-share network, which had increased its ridership this year, suddenly had fewer riders than during the same stretch of August last year. The system also increased its prices on Aug. 1, but the notable ridership decline didn’t appear until after the federal surge began:
Taxi trips have generally been down all year compared with 2024, but one of the steepest year-over-year weekly declines also occurred during the surge. Quieter streets are also reflected in a decline in parking enforcement complaints to the city’s 311 system, compared with last year.
We also looked at the number of transit riders on the metro, comparing year-over-year changes in weekly ridership. Systemwide, ridership hasn’t fallen. While some stations have counted fewer riders than the same period last year, others have counted more, with no clear trends by neighborhood.
The cellphone data from the mapping company Mapbox also showed a range of activity levels for destinations around the city. While places like Columbia Heights and Eastern Market did grow quieter, the zoo and National Mall were among those that showed less clear patterns.
Restaurants have struggled, too, with both the loss of immigrant staff who’ve stopped coming to work — or been detained — and with lagging business from diners. The city’s restaurant association extended its summer Restaurant Week into a second week to try to drive more business. But according to data reported by OpenTable, restaurants in D.C. ended the month with about the same level of diners making online reservations they had last August — a notable dip from gains in previous months, and in comparison with other U.S. cities.
The tourism industry has fretted that all the talk of crime is feeding tourists’ impressions that Washington is dangerous, or militarized.
“The No. 1 call we’re getting is: ‘We don’t want to come to a city where there’s tanks on the streets,’” said Elliott L. Ferguson, the president of the city’s tourism group, Destination D.C., speaking at an industry event in late August.
From Aug. 10 to Aug. 30, hotel occupancy was down 4 percent compared with last year in data from the real estate company CoStar. That’s compared with a 2 percent year-over-year drop in the first seven months of 2025.
At Labyrinth Games & Puzzles, a popular shop near the Capitol with an international reputation, the owner Kathleen Donahue has seen a drop in tourists. Her business is down 20 percent during the surge from the same time last year, she said, when it had previously been up this year. Last weekend, she ran a used-game sale, her largest annual event, and some of her customers called to say they weren’t comfortable riding the metro to bring her games for the event.
Then this week came another scene that couldn’t help: “They let a whole busload of guards off with guns right in front of my store last night.”
Afraid to go to the grocery store
Some of these changes — the feel of a neighborhood, the dimming street life — are harder to measure than crime itself. But they weigh against the benefits of the law enforcement surge.
“That’s fundamentally what we’re all doing in our heads — saying, ‘Yeah, crime’s down, but also, there’s not good people-watching when I go outside anymore, and the restaurants are empty, and I feel uncomfortable walking,’” said Jennifer Doleac, the executive vice president for criminal justice at Arnold Ventures, a think tank and philanthropy.
Add all of that up, she said, and maybe things seem worse even if crime is down. For some communities and groups, the costs in that ledger are also especially steep.
“I’ve gotten a lot of phone calls of hungry people,” said Julio Hernandez, who runs the Congregation Action Network, which links churches working to support immigrant rights. Those immigrants are afraid to visit the grocery store, he said, even from an apartment complex one block away. And they’re not visiting food banks, where people typically line up on the sidewalk.
Community health centers that serve low-income residents and immigrants in a city-run health insurance program report changes, too. One center estimated that visits were down 20 to 25 percent over the past few weeks. The D.C. Primary Care Association said its members have seen federal officers stationed outside clinics and more canceled appointments.
“Patients are explicitly citing fear of encountering law enforcement as the reason for not coming in-person,” Ruth Pollard, the president and chief executive of the association, said in a statement.
Several organizations also described immigrant families who kept their children home from school. But there is no public data to gauge individual school attendance yet, and city officials said that systemwide attendance appeared to be steady.
In Ward 8, Mr. Young recounted a cautionary note from Black residents who’ve long had a distrusting relationship with the police. He leads monthly peace walks there with neighbors affected by recent shootings. When the community met on a Sunday in late August to walk, residents asked for the first time that M.P.D. officers not join them.
“And no young people came,” he said. They had retreated, too.
JoAnna Daemmrich contributed reporting.
Emily Badger writes about cities and urban policy for The Times from Washington. She’s particularly interested in housing, transportation and inequality — and how they’re all connected.
Ben Blatt is a reporter for The Upshot specializing in data-driven journalism.
Alicia Parlapiano is a Times reporter covering government policy and politics, primarily using data and charts.
The post How Trump’s Crime Crackdown Muted Other Parts of D.C. Life appeared first on New York Times.
