A congressional report from the House Oversight Committee accuses the chief of the Washington, DC, police force of meddling with crime statistics.
The report claims Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Chief Pamela Smith told commanders to downgrade offenses and avoid certain classifications, Fox News reported Monday.
The document from the Republican-led committee, titled “Leadership Breakdown: How D.C.’s Police Chief Undermined Crime Data Accuracy,” was published on Sunday.
It reads in part:
During October and November 2025, the Committee conducted eight transcribed interviews with the seven acting—and one suspended—MPD commanders. This is an interim report released following Chief Smith’s December 8 resignation announcement. (3) While the Committee continues to investigate documents related to crime statistics reporting, testimony exhibited in this report paints a troubling picture of department leadership placing a higher priority on suppressing public reporting of crime statistics than stopping crime itself.
Officials said they are releasing the report to protect witnesses from retaliation and inform the public.
“MPD commanders’ testimonies corroborated concerns about alleged manipulations of crime statistics,” the document added. “In fact, commanders told the Committee that, on numerous occasions, they were not only pressured, but also instructed, to lower crime classifications to lesser intermediate offenses in such a way that those offenses would not be included in the DCR reported to the public.”
One individual identified as Commander E described what allegedly happened after robbery sprees in the area:
On two occasions I had. . . robbery sprees, and I think I had, like, 13 robberies in over a night period, a day period. And, yeah, I was – usually you have, there’s — an order of how you brief out, but at the very beginning of the crime briefing, the chief said, “I need to see [Commander E] up front to brief first.” So I got up there and I was basically admonished. I was like, “How could I let these robberies happen?” It was embarrassing, but it happened. And then it stemmed other meetings after that to sit down and kind of drill down to what’s happening. I did feel like I did the robberies after I left. I literally was, like, I swear I did not commit them.
Further into the document, officials allege:
By pressuring her command staff to alter classifications for the sole purpose of artificially reducing crime numbers reported out to the public, Chief Smith incentivized the manipulation of crime numbers, which do not adequately account for the crime taking place in D.C.
The day she announced her resignation, Smith denied manipulating crime data, per Fox 5:
The news comes after President Donald Trump federalized MPD in August to address rampant crime in the area, Breitbart News reported at the time. Crime in the nation’s capital quickly saw a significant drop, and Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) admitted the surge in law enforcement dramatically reduced crime and made residents feel safer.
In 2023, Washington, DC, recorded the highest annual number of homicides since 1997 despite its tough gun control, per Breitbart News.
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