During the Biden’s Handler’s years, Washington DC crime rates were furiously spun. DC’s local Democrat politicians assured us DC was virtually crime free, even as occasional news reports of burglaries, carjacking, assaults and even murders leaked out. After Donald Trump took office for his second term, Democrats tried to maintain the fiction, comically holding news conferences on DC streets as violent crimes occurred within sight and sound of cameras.
Finally having enough, Trump lawfully federalized DC law enforcement, and even as Democrats still scream DC has no crime problem, Trump’s a dictator, and the crime that isn’t occurring is at historic lows, real crime, in a single week, is finally, dramatically, declining:
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DC used to have up to four murders a week.
A DC police Commander has recently been suspended for allegedly manipulating crime statistics, and tales of ranking officers throughout the city showing up at felony crime scenes, telling officers to write reports categorizing murders as accidents and otherwise downgrading felonies to misdemeanors, are proliferating like flowers in springtime.
And now, one DC police whistleblower has been vindicated:
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Washington, D.C., has quietly settled a lawsuit from former police sergeant Charlotte Djossou, who alleged that her Metropolitan Police Department superiors instructed officers to downgrade crimes to lesser offenses to disguise the city’s true crime rate. The settlement occurred on August 5, the same day that President Donald Trump warned he might impose federal control over D.C.’s police.
What an amazing coincidence!
According to the Free Beacon, Djossou:
[A]ccused MPD brass of attempting to “distort crime statistics” by “downgrading a number of felonies to misdemeanors, so that there will be ‘fewer’ felonies in the statistics.” She also provided records showing that police leaders explicitly instructed their subordinates to underclassify certain instances of theft to keep them out of the crime stats the city reports to the public.
MPD Commander Randy Griffin was deposed in the investigation that followed Djossou’s allegations:
Griffin testified that Porter and former MPD lieutenant Andrew Zabavsky came up with the idea to classify certain incidents as “Taking Property Without Right” (TPWOR) instead of “Shoplifting” or “Theft.” Court records indicate that Zabavsky admitted this was done because TPWOR offenses are not included in the D.C. Crime Report.
The plan later became the Fourth District’s operating procedure. On March 12, 2019, MPD captain Sean Conboy sent an email to his officers in which he asked them to reclassify minor thefts as TPWOR offenses.
After that directive, TPWOR reports increased by 500%, and of course, the reports of actual crimes decreased as dramatically. Crime doesn’t happen if no one takes reports or misclassifies crimes.
The article doesn’t explain exactly why MPD brass began demanding officers lie about crime classifications, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.
DC is arguably the most Democrat-controlled city in the nation. Its black population is 43%+, while the national black population distribution is about 14%. DC politicians, substantially black, have a vested interest in portraying DC crime as insignificant. To do otherwise would reveal their incompetence and malice in allowing predominantly black criminals to bedevil predominantly black victims. Out of control crime also exposes their leftist policies as not only a purposeful, failed choice, but as deadly to the black citizens about whom they pretend to care so much.
High-ranking police bureaucrats in blue cities and states don’t get or keep their positions unless they’re more than willing to believe and enforce the party line, which always precludes effective policing. It’s possible they, without demands from politicians, decided to lie about crime to please their bosses and keep their cushy jobs. Considering DC Police Chief Pamela Smith recently had no idea what a chain of command was, it’s obvious DEI is far from dead in the DC Police Department, and DEI absolutely keeps inconvenient truths under the radar.
What’s most likely is DC’s Mayor and/or staff, likely following orders from Congressional Democrats, told DC Police brass to get crime under control, perhaps even by manipulating statistics. Doing that without betraying woke principles by actually arresting and prosecuting criminals was impossible, so they did the next best, obvious, thing: they made crime go away by ignoring it, as usual, and by manipulating classifications and statistics.
It appears that fundamentally dishonest, arguable illegal, and certainly destructive and deadly game is up. Investigations are under way. Trump’s federalization of the MPD has already revealed crime in blue cities isn’t inevitable; it’s a Democrat choice.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.