On Monday, President Donald Trump moved to federalize the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) under a provision of the Home Rule Act, which is specific to the nation's capital as a federal district. That came after a series of high-profile violent attacks that led the administration to seek changes from the city council. When the latter thumbed their noses at the White House, an escalation became imminent.
SEE: Trump Administration Takes Control of the District of Columbia
That move was further bolstered with the deployment of FBI agents to help patrol the streets. The National Guard is being mobilized as well to offer support and deterrence. All of this is part of an aggressive strategy by Trump to lower crime rates in D.C.
Expectedly, the reaction from the press and their Democrat allies was not positive, and one talking point immediately emerged: That crime is dramatically down in the city. CNN even ran slides of statistics making that claim alongside the White House press conference announcing the various measures in an obvious narrative-building effort.
Are those numbers correct, though? Well, prepare to be shocked, but CNN and the like aren't actually telling you the truth. In fact, they are leaving out a major bit of context that completely disqualifies the very statistics they are bandying about to counter the administration.
As it turns out, their source is the MPD, which should be noted is run by a left-wing DEI advocate who was literally hired in 2022 as the "Chief Equity Officer" before being promoted to police chief a year later. Still, that alone doesn't mean the crime statistics they put out are wrong. For that, we'd need some kind of proof that the books were being cooked, and lo and behold, we have that.
In a report published in July, it was revealed that a D.C. police commander was recently suspended for falsifying data to improve the city's crime statistics.
The Metropolitan Police Department confirmed Michael Pulliam was placed on paid administrative leave in mid-May. That happened just a week after Pulliam filed an equal employment opportunity complaint against an assistant chief and the police union accused the department of deliberately falsifying crime data, according to three law enforcement sources familiar with the complaint.
The union claims police supervisors in the department manipulate crime data to make it appear violent crime has fallen considerably compared to last year.
According to sources, the conspiracy is widespread and essentially an unstated policy. The D.C. police union, which has been working to expose all this, says that multiple supervisors have been reclassifying crimes so that they don't show up in the reports.
“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 said. “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.”
The police department's command staff is focusing on two categories in order to get the numbers to fall, Pemberton said: armed with a dangerous weapon and injured person to the hospital.
“When management officials are directing officers to take reports for felony assault, or if they're going back into police databases and changing offenses to felony assault, felony assault is not a category of crime that's listed on the department's daily crime stats,” Pemberton said. “It's also not something that's a requirement of the FBI's uniform crime reporting program. So, by changing criminal offenses from, for example, ADW bat or ADW gun to felony assault, that would avoid both the MPD and the FBI from reporting that as a part one or a felony offense.”
In other words, department leaders have been changing stabbings, shootings, and carjackings to lesser classifications like felony assault because then they will not show up in the daily crime statistics. Those crimes are also not required to be reported to the FBI, which is where most crime statistics are compiled nationwide.
All of this is deliberate.
“What we've heard through our members and through members of management that were willing to talk with the union is that this is a directive from the command staff, is that they wanna make sure that these classifications of these reports are adjusted over time to make sure that the overall crime stats stay down,” Pemberton said. “And this is deliberately done.”
So the next time you see the press or a Democrat politician claim "crime is down in D.C." as a way to push back on the administration, know that they are citing discredited statistics that were birthed out of a scandal that's been unfolding for months. No one should believe anything the MPD puts out, and anyone who goes along with their numbers is being willfully dishonest.
Editor's Note: The days of lawlessness in Washington, D.C. are over. Thanks to President Trump, our nation's capital will be SAFE once again.
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