The murder stats for the Washington ‘area’ (4.0m) in 1991 were 719 murders and a rate of 18 per 100,000. This is the Washington which should be compared with very large cities such as Bogota, Rio etc.

In fact, it’s also closer in population to the far smaller Medellin than the ‘D.C.’ core. The very small D.C. city with 0.6m people was 81 per 100,000 (all peak 1991 figures).

http://rkba.org/research/nejm/nejm-payne

Colombia’s gotten much safer in recent years though still much worse than the states.

For example,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Metropolitan_Area

The Washington Metropolitan Area, formally known as the Washington–Arlington–Alexandria, DC–VA–MD–WV MSA, is a U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) defined by the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as of November 2004[update]. It is also part of the larger Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area. As of the 2007 Census Bureau estimate[update], the population of the Washington Metropolitan Area was estimated to be 5,306,565.

I think this may be what Dawg is referring to.

Of course, the murder rate in the district is higher than in the greater DC SMSA, but I don’t know off hand if it has ever been as high as Bogota or Cali, Colombia at their worst recently.

You wouldn’t believe how many people repeat this falsehood, like a mantra. The murder capital of the world in the early 90’s was Medellin, Colombia.

In 1991 which was also Washington’s peak year, the city of Medellin recorded 6,349 murders and a rate of 381 per 100,000. Washington with just under 4 million people recorded 719 murders and a rate of 18 per 100,000.

There were numerous other South American urban areas much more dangerous than Washington at the time. Cali, Caracas, Bogota, Rio, Sao Paulo Recife etc.