The Overlooked Story of DC Command and Manipulation of Crime Stats

Acting D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith made a poor appearance at a recent press conference for not being able to answer a question about chain of command. She seemed helpless before the cameras. Her background for the position is largely as a chief equity officer for the MPD and as a former park police chief.

New information from the D.C. Police Union President suggests that, under her leadership, police districts are manipulating data to make it appear as though crime is going down.

If true, it wasn’t enough that D.C. has ridiculously loose laws to bring down crime numbers.

It is important to note that the President can only take over crime in D.C. for 30 days. What happens after that? Congress would have to act, but will they?

The Overlooked Story

A story that began last May has largely been ignored. A D.C. police commander Michael Pulliam is accused of manipulating crime statistics. potentially at the directive of the command staff.

Smith released this statement:

“The Metropolitan Police Department is committed to upholding the trust and the confidence of the public. Any irregularity in crime data brought to my attention will be addressed immediately. I do not condone any official reclassifying criminal offenses outside the guidelines set in MPD policy. Any allegation of this behavior will be dealt with through our internal processes, which will ensure those members are held accountable. I have the utmost confidence in the command staff leadership currently in place across the Metropolitan Police Department.”

Multiple law enforcement sources told News4 that Pulliam filed an equal employment opportunity complaint against Executive Assistant Chief Andre Wright prior to being placed on leave.

Pulliam denies the allegations against him.

The wider concerns

The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) has raised wider concerns about the potential manipulation of crime statistics to show decreases in violent crime.

According to FOP Chairman Gregg Pemberton, officers have been instructed to downgrade serious felony offenses to lesser charges in order to make crime numbers appear lower.

“This is being directed by the MPD command staff in order to keep crime stats low,” Pemberton said, calling the official numbers “misleading.” He added, “There’s absolutely no way crime could be down 28%. Last year, they suggested that it went down 34%.”

An internal investigation suggests it was only Pulliam manipulating data in his district. That’s an investigation of themselves by themselves.