The House Oversight Committee on Monday launched an investigation into whether the Washington, D.C., police department falsified violent crime data at the direction of department leadership to make the district appear safer.
The House committee is “investigating disturbing allegations that DC crime data is inaccurate and intentionally manipulated, potentially at the direction of Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) leadership,” according to a letter that committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.) sent Monday to D.C. police chief Pamela Smith. The manipulation was “widespread” and “potentially impacts all seven patrol districts,” Comer wrote, citing a whistleblower familiar with the department’s internal operations.
According to Comer, the whistleblower alleged that supervisors, seeking to make crime rates appear lower, would overrule patrol officers who “actually interviewed witnesses and collected evidence” and instead recommend reduced charges. The whistleblower came forward more than a month ago, a committee aide told the Washington Post.
The Justice Department last week also launched a probe into the data manipulation allegations.
The congressional investigation comes amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on crime in D.C., during which he has deployed the National Guard in D.C. and placed the district’s police department under federal control. In response, several mainstream media outlets and Democrats such as D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser have cited police statistics to claim that the city’s crime rates are at a 30-year low.
Leaders of the D.C. police department were accused of rigging the city’s crime stats as early as 2019, the Washington Free Beacon reported. On August 5, the District of Columbia also quietly settled a 2020 lawsuit from a sergeant who accused police department leaders of misclassifying offenses to deflate the district’s crime statistics, according to court records obtained by the Free Beacon.
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Author: Matthew Xiao
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