Prince George’s crime down 13% this year as domestic violence reports rise 15%, police data show

By Rosa Montclair

UPPER MARLBORO, Md. — Reported crime in Prince George’s County is down 13 percent so far this year, with carjackings and robberies cut roughly in half from 2025, according to the county police department’s own figures. One major category is moving the other way: reports of domestic violence are up 15 percent.

The Prince George’s County Police Department’s Daily Crime Report, updated through Sunday, Oct. 25, counts 13,695 crimes in the department’s primary jurisdiction since Jan. 1, compared with 15,691 over the same period last year. Murders are down 35 percent, from 54 to 35. Carjackings fell 54 percent, from 123 to 57, and robberies of all kinds fell 48 percent.

Domestic violence reports rose from 960 to 1,108. Almost all of the increase is in domestic assaults without a weapon, which climbed 17 percent, from 827 to 970. Thefts other than from cars also rose, by 11 percent.

The department’s report covers crimes reported to or within the primary jurisdiction of the county police and excludes those handled by the county’s municipal police departments. It warns that its figures “are subject to change as incidents are investigated and reclassified” and that its categories “differ from offense definitions used in FBI Uniform Crime Reporting.”

A two-year decline, by the county’s open data

The county’s public crime incidents data set, which the police department publishes on the county’s open data portal, allows a comparison going back to 2024. The data set was last updated Sept. 29 and runs through Sept. 24, so the Inquisitor compared Jan. 1 through Sept. 24 of each year.

On that measure the declines are steeper. Incidents the data set labels vehicle robberies, its category for carjackings, fell from 239 in the first nine months of 2024 to 38 this year, a drop of 84 percent. Commercial robberies fell 87 percent and stolen-car reports 39 percent.

The open data set is not a substitute for the Daily Crime Report. The portal describes it as information on incidents “where a report has been written,” with addresses rounded to the nearest hundred block to protect victims, and says it “does not represent every call for service handled by PGPD.” Its categories are assigned when a report is taken and do not always match the department’s later classifications. Its homicide count, for example, is lower than the Daily Crime Report’s murder count for the same period, and its sex offense count is rising while the Daily Crime Report’s is falling. The Inquisitor uses the open data only to show the direction of trends over three years, not as official totals.

Two categories rose in the open data across both years: general thefts, up 20 percent since 2024, and sex offense reports, up 29 percent. Traffic accident reports are also up slightly.

Month by month

The county’s open data show carjackings, which it records as vehicle robberies, falling to single digits a month this year. In the first nine months of 2024, the data set recorded between 15 and 42 a month. In 2026 the monthly count has ranged from one, in January, to nine, in August. Stolen-car reports have run about 210 to 300 a month this year, compared with about 280 to 440 a month in 2024.

*September 2026 covers Sept. 1–24 only, the latest data available.

The steady low counts this year suggest the carjacking decline is not the product of one unusually quiet month. The open data cannot say why crimes fell. The data set records incidents, not causes, and the Inquisitor has asked the police department what it attributes the decline to.

Domestic violence, up all year

The domestic violence increase is not new. In her Aug. 21 newsletter, Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Tara H. Jackson reported that as of Aug. 20, violent crime was down 8 percent and homicides down 40 percent, while “domestic violence is up 12% overall,” with domestic assaults with no weapon up 14 percent. By Oct. 25, the police department’s count showed the overall increase at 15 percent.

Domestic violence non-fatal shootings are roughly flat, 12 this year against 11 last year, and domestic assaults with other weapons are up 3 percent, according to the Daily Crime Report.

The figures do not show whether more abuse is happening or more victims are reporting it. Reporting can rise when victims have more places to turn. The State’s Attorney’s Office said in August that it had secured Victims of Crime Act grant money for two more victim-witness coordinators, one of whom would be stationed at the county’s Family Justice Center to serve domestic violence survivors.

Law enforcement has also stepped up enforcement. On Oct. 14, more than 14 agencies joined the county sheriff’s office for an annual warrant sweep aimed at about 200 outstanding domestic violence-related warrants, WJLA reported. The warrants included second-degree assault, first-degree assault and protective-order violations, Acting Lt. Jeffery Mayberry told the station. “If we can kind of prevent something before it happens, like your violation of ex parte, a lot of those cases, if you go back in history, they may have violated protective orders multiple times,” Mayberry said.

What fell most

Robbery and car crime account for most of the decline. In the Daily Crime Report, robberies dropped by 286 and stolen-vehicle reports by 908. Thefts from cars fell by 1,029, the largest numeric drop of any category. Commercial burglaries fell 34 percent and residential burglaries 18 percent. Residential robberies, a small category, fell from 20 to three. Within assaults, which the report breaks into non-fatal shootings, assaults with other weapons and assaults with no weapon, only assaults with other weapons rose, from 295 to 300. Non-fatal shootings fell from 146 to 113, a decline of 33 incidents, and assaults with no weapon fell by 26.

Violent crime as a whole is down a more modest 8 percent, because assaults, the largest violent category, are down only 4 percent and domestic violence is up.

The last seven days were quieter than the week before, according to the report: 256 crimes from Oct. 19 to Oct. 25, compared with 335 the previous week, with no murders reported. Weekly numbers swing widely and are not a reliable trend.

Caveats

The Daily Crime Report excludes municipal police departments such as those in Bowie, Greenbelt, Hyattsville and Laurel, and the State’s Attorney’s August figures were drawn from a version of the report that included both county and municipal data, so the two are not directly comparable. Both sources are preliminary. Year-end figures reported to the FBI and the Maryland State Police may differ.

For residents, the county police post the Daily Crime Report each day, and the county’s open data portal links to incident-level data. People experiencing domestic violence can reach the county’s Family Justice Center through the county government or call 911 in an emergency.

How we did this

The Inquisitor took the year-to-date figures as published in the Daily Crime Report for Sunday, Oct. 25. For the open data comparison, it queried the county’s Socrata data set xjru-idbe for each incident category for Jan. 1 through Sept. 24 in 2024, 2025 and 2026 and counted records. Percent changes are rounded to the nearest whole number. No individual incidents or people are identified in this story.

The Inquisitor is seeking comment from the Prince George’s County Police Department, the Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Office, County Executive Aisha Braveboy’s office, the Prince George’s County Council and the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence.