Violent weekend in Prince George’s County stands in contrast with regionwide declines in crime
It’s been a violent start to the new year in Prince George’s County, Maryland, which saw three people shot and killed outside a banquet hall in the Marlow Heights area early Saturday morning.
Police responded to the shooting shortly after 2 a.m. in the parking lot of the venue in the 4300 block of Saint Barnabas Road.
Another homicide investigation is underway in the Kettering area, where a man was found shot to death inside a car on Sunday morning. Police were doing a welfare check on a man in the 300 block of Watkins Park Drive when they found the man who was pronounced dead on the scene.
But those two incidents don’t change the fact that the county saw notable declines in violent crime throughout 2025, reporting a 40% drop in murders compared to 2024. And police there closed out the year reiterating big declines in other forms of violent and juvenile crime too.
Similar stories can be told in other parts of the region. D.C. has yet to record a homicide so far in 2026, after seeing a 32% decline in that statistic over the course of 2025. The 128 people killed in the city last year is the fewest since 2017.
The department says some of the credit can go to the federal interventions that took place last year. The Trump Administration surged agents from several federal law enforcement agencies on to city streets to help tamp down violent crime.
“Now we have no crime in Washington, D.C.,” said the president over the weekend.
The District reported big declines in other types of violent crime, including shootings, robberies, and carjackings, though some of those numbers have been called into question by federal officials and even the city’s police union.
Other parts of the DMV, including Fairfax, Prince William, and Montgomery Counties, also reported improvements to violent crime rates over the course of 2025.