How many murders in Washington DC between October 2025- December 2025?
Executive summary
A precise count of murders in Washington, D.C., specifically occurring between October 2025 and December 2025, cannot be reliably extracted from the reporting provided; the sources include year-to-date snapshots and summaries but do not publish a discrete, cited tally for that three‑month window in the supplied excerpts [1] [2] [3]. The authoritative public places to obtain an exact month-by-month count are the Metropolitan Police Department’s Daily Crime / year‑end dataset and the District’s open data portal, which the available reporting references but does not reproduce in full here [1] [4].
1. What the sources actually deliver — year‑to‑date trends, not the October–December slice
Multiple outlets and analysts cite MPD and DC open‑data totals that show homicide totals falling through various points in 2025 — for example, mid‑year and through July/August — but the provided snippets stop short of giving a verified count limited to October through December 2025 [3] [5] [2]. The MPD’s public “District Crime Data at a Glance” page is explicitly described as containing year‑end 2025 data accurate as of Jan. 1, 2026, which implies the department holds the monthly breakdowns needed for the October–December figure, but that specific monthly breakdown is not quoted in the supplied material [1].
2. What can be inferred from the trend data in the reporting
Analysts and national outlets converge on the narrative that homicides in D.C. declined in 2025 relative to 2024: AH Datalytics and other commentators reported declines through mid‑2025 (96 murders through July per Jeff Asher), PBS and ABC cited lower year‑to‑date totals in August and December respectively, and ABC noted MPD online data showing homicides down roughly 31% as of Dec. 30, 2025 [3] [5] [2]. Those trend points demonstrate a clear year‑over‑year decrease, but they do not substitute for the discrete count requested for October–December [3] [5] [2].
3. Why a precise Oct–Dec number is missing in these excerpts
The Real‑Time Crime Index and local open data feeds often publish monthly or incident‑level data, yet the Axios summary warns that some databases only publish through October in their public snapshots and that data definitions vary [6]. More importantly, the supplied reporting excerpts summarize totals or percentages (e.g., “down 31%”) rather than reproducing the MPD’s monthly homicide counts; therefore, asserting an exact number for Oct–Dec 2025 from these excerpts would require extrapolation beyond the available evidence [2] [6].
4. Where to get the exact count and how to judge it
The authoritative sources for the requested three‑month count are the MPD’s “Daily Crime” / year‑end dataset and the DC Open Data ‘Crime Incidents in 2025’ dataset, both cited in the reporting and known to contain incident‑level timestamps and classifications that can be filtered by month [1] [4]. Journalists and researchers should use those primary datasets to filter homicide incidents by occurrence date for October, November and December 2025; when using those datasets, be mindful that definitions and classification practices (what counts as “murder” vs. manslaughter or accidental killing) and timing of data entry can affect totals, a limitation noted across reporting on trends [6] [1].
5. Reporting caveats and political context
Multiple pieces of reporting referenced political claims about crime and federal intervention in D.C.; outlets note both significant declines reported by MPD and pushback about interpretation, including concerns about classification and potential incentives to show improvements — an important caveat when interpreting headline percentage drops absent raw counts [2] [5] [7]. Given those conflicting pressures and the fact that the supplied excerpts provide trend snapshots rather than the month‑by‑month tally, the responsible conclusion is that the exact number of murders in Washington, D.C., between October and December 2025 is not present in the provided reporting and must be obtained by querying the MPD/Open Data incident records directly [1] [4].