As national attention to the level of crime in the Nation’s Capital intensifies in light of President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to assist law enforcement officers in D.C., a new report reveals that the city has quietly settled a lawsuit by a whistleblower alleging police have been misclassifying cases – for years – in order to underreport the number of serious crimes.

After President Trump announced Monday that he was sending the National Guard into the federal city, Democrats and legacy media have been claiming that crime statistics aren’t high enough to justify the help of federal law enforcement officers.

On Friday, The Washington Free Beacon reported that the MPD has settled the lawsuit alleging underreporting of violent crime. In the article, the Beacon provided details of court records:

“Police brass repeatedly told officers to downgrade theft cases, knife attacks, and violent assaults to lesser offenses, according to internal MPD emails, depositions, and phone call transcripts the Free Beacon reviewed.”

According to testimony and depositions reviewed by the Beacon, MPD leadership ordered officers to:

In 2020, Charlotte Djossou, a former Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) sergeant, sued the department for retaliating against her because she spoke out about the mandated practice of downgrading offenses in order to “distort crime statistics.”

Djossou’s accusations appear to be supported by a report that MPD Police Commander Michael Pulliam was put on leave in mid-May placed under investigation due to charges by the D.C. Police Union that his department deliberately changed and falsified crime statistics.

“When our members respond to the scene of a felony offense where there is a victim reporting that a felony occurred, inevitably there will be a lieutenant or a captain that will show up on that scene and direct those members to take a report for a lesser offense,” Fraternal Order of Police Chairman Gregg Pemberton told local station NBC Washington:

“So, instead of taking a report for a shooting or a stabbing or a carjacking, they will order that officer to take a report for a theft or an injured person to the hospital or a felony assault, which is not the same type of classification.”

By changing “Assault with a Dangerous Weapon” (ADW) charges to the lesser “Felony Assault” offense, the crimes are not listed in the department's daily crime statistics and are not reported to the FBI's uniform crime reporting program.

Investigators in Djossou’s case were also told that MPD directives were sent to staff instructing them to place crimes in the “Taking Property Without Right” category, where they wouldn’t be counted in the D.C. Crime Report.

After the directives went out, the number of Taking Property Without Right cases skyrocketed 500%.