[Source](https://twitchy.com/grateful-calvin/2025/08/08/the-dc-homicide-rate-is-horrific-and-the-reason-why-trump-should-strip-it-of-home-rule-n2416906) > The District of Columbia never had a local government, mayor, or city council until 1973, when President Nixon signed the DC Home Rule Act, one of the few domestic policy mistakes he ever made. For 100 years before that, the city was governed by a three-member commission appointed by the President. > It's been all downhill for DC since 1973. Those old enough will remember how Mayor Marion Barry was caught smoking crack in a hotel room in 1990 and sent to prison for six months. Embarrassingly, DC not only elected him to the city council after he got out, but he was also re-elected as mayor multiple times, all of them landslides. > Countless other DC elected officials have been caught in corruption scandals as well, but the city's biggest shame, at least for the past 40 years, has been crime, particularly violent crime. In the 80s and 90s, DC was the murder capital of the country. Violent crime subsided a bit in the city after that, but has resurged dramatically in recent years, particularly during the regime of the current mayor, Muriel Bowser, who has been in office for a full decade.