Congress investigating whether D.C. police manipulated crime data

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The House Oversight Committee is investigating whether D.C. police manipulated data in a potentially widespread effort to make crime rates appear lower at the direction of department leadership, according to records reviewed by The Washington Post.

The inquiry comes on the heels of a Justice Department probe into similar matters and as D.C. officials continue to cite local crime statistics to protest President Donald Trump’s takeover of law enforcement in the nation’s capital, now stretching into its third week.

While wresting control of the D.C. police force and deploying the D.C. National Guard, Trump and his allies have repeatedly challenged the accuracy of local crime statistics that show violent crime dropping to historically low levels since 2023. The chairman of the D.C. police union has also suggested, among a slew of complaints about the department’s leadership, that violent crime has been undercounted.

The Republican-led committee heard from a whistleblower and 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 obtained by The Post that the committee chairman sent Monday to D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith.

Committee investigators are seeking a broad array of agency documents and communication records, plus interviews with the commanders of each of D.C.'s seven patrol districts. They have also requested that Michael Pulliam, a D.C. police commander put on leave earlier this year amid an internal inquiry into whether he made inappropriate changes to crime data, assist with their investigation. Pulliam denies all allegations and declined to comment further.

A spokesperson for D.C. police did not respond to a request for comment late Monday morning. A spokesperson for the mayor’s office declined to comment.

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) previously told NBC4, which first reported on Pulliam’s suspension last month, that the police chief had investigated all seven districts for signs of such manipulation and had concerns only around Pulliam.

“We are completing that investigation, and we don’t believe it implicates many cases,” Bowser said.

But the Oversight Committee believes that “this practice does not appear to be isolated, nor is it a recent development,” according to the letter Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the committee’s chairman, sent to Smith on Monday.

A whistleblower with knowledge of internal police department operations shared allegations that “crime statistics were manipulated on a widespread basis and at the direction of supervisory officials” within the department, Comer wrote. Stretching far beyond any individual commander, the practice “potentially impacts all seven patrol districts.”

“The whistleblower stated this manipulation is accomplished by supervisors — with only a cursory understanding of the facts and circumstances of the crime — ignoring the judgment of patrol officers who actually interviewed witnesses and collected evidence by recommending reduced charges,” Comer wrote. “If recommended charges in a particular case are being downgraded to present the false narrative of a safer city, a byproduct of this manipulation is that prosecutors responsible for holding offenders accountable may be misled on the seriousness of a particular crime.”

The whistleblower came forward more than a month ago, according to a committee aide.

Earlier this month, Trump declared a crime emergency in D.C., placing the local police force under direct federal control and deploying hundreds of D.C. National Guard troops — an extraordinary flex of federal power and part of his wide-reaching effort to make his mark on deep-blue U.S. cities. Republican governors of half a dozen states have since mobilized their own National Guard units and sent troops to D.C.

On Sunday, Trump threatened to expand military deployments to Baltimore, disparaging Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s track record on public safety “unless he fudges his figures on crime like many of the other ‘Blue States’ are doing.”

D.C. officials have challenged Trump’s rationale for such an aggressive assertion of power, noting that most major categories of crime have been falling since 2023, when a spike in killings rendered the nation’s capital one of America’s deadliest cities, plunging communities into grief and igniting a local political crisis that escalated to Congress.

Cities across the country experienced significant crime increases during the pandemic, and the rates have since dropped — though D.C.’s elevated level persisted longer than most other cities’ before it began to decrease.

Homicides, for example, have dropped 13% this year in D.C. compared with the same period last year.

Local officials haven’t been the only ones emphasizing D.C.'s crime declines. Trump’s former interim U.S. attorney for D.C., Ed Martin, issued a news release in April, to mark Trump’s first 100 days in office, celebrating what he called a 25% drop in the District’s violent crime since the start of the year.

But the increasing scrutiny on the police force has brought attention to long-standing complaints within the department that managers have reclassified crimes to play down the level of danger in their police districts and avoid scrutiny from higher-ups, The Post previously reported.

In 2020, a D.C. police veteran claimed in a lawsuit that the department retaliated against her after she raised concerns about the conduct of some supervisors, including allegations of efforts to “distort crime statistics” to make it appear crime was down. Sgt. Charlotte Djossou described in the lawsuit how felony thefts were tallied as misdemeanors. She also claimed that in 2019, she arrived at the scene of a domestic violence assault involving a knife — which she considered “an unambiguous felony” — but discovered that a lieutenant had downgraded the charge to a misdemeanor of simple assault.

The city and Djossou settled this summer, according to court records. Djossou’s lawyer declined to comment.

D.C. Police Union Chairman Gregg Pemberton, who supports the federal takeover of the police force as a “drastic but necessary step,” also said he doubts crime is as low as the mayor has claimed.

“I think that there’s a possibility that crime has come down,” Pemberton said recently on NBC News — but not nearly by the amount shown in the data, which he called “preposterous.”

Because of D.C.’s unique status as outlined in the Constitution, Congress has final say over its laws and budgets. The House Oversight Committee has jurisdiction over the District’s municipal affairs.

“The Committee has obtained credible, alarming information that MPD leadership falsified crime data to deceptively show a decline in violent crime in the District. MPD has a duty under federal law to accurately report crime to the public, and the Committee is now taking action to investigate these allegations and ensure the safety of D.C. residents and visitors is never compromised,” Comer said in a statement to The Post.

The crime data investigation joins a yearslong campaign of federal intervention in D.C. affairs and scrutiny from the Oversight Committee, which has grilled local leaders about public safety.

Comer has repeatedly criticized the D.C. Council for a “soft-on-crime” approach and in 2023 helped helm a successful bipartisan effort to block an overhaul of D.C.’s criminal code that changed how crimes are defined and lowered statutory maximum penalties for some violent crimes.

Federal prosecutors and congressional investigators aren’t the only ones looking for evidence of a crime data cover-up.

Earlier this month, America First Legal, a group founded by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, said it was seeking police documents about possible falsification.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to take credit for bringing down crime in the nation’s capital, touting the number of arrests made daily and casting doubt on the accuracy of city statistics.

In a post Friday on social media, Trump threatened a full federal takeover of the District, writing on Truth Social: “Mayor Muriel Bowser must immediately stop giving false and highly inaccurate crime figures, or bad things will happen, including a complete and total Federal takeover of the City!”