Congressional panel accuses D.C. police chief of pressuring commanders to manipulate crime data

WASHINGTON — The police chief in the nation’s capital pressured subordinates to manipulate department data to artificially lower the city’s crime rates, according to a report by a Republican-led congressional committee.

The report, released Sunday by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, found that Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith often threatened, punished and retaliated against police commanders who presented her with “spikes in crime.”

A separate investigation by U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro’s office also found that a significant number of police reports had been misclassified to make crime rates appear lower than they are.

Pirro’s office began its investigation in August at the height of a political showdown between Republican President Trump’s administration and the city over control of the police department. Trump claimed violent crime in Washington was getting worse as he ordered a federal takeover of the police department,

Neither investigation found grounds for charging anybody with a crime.

“However, it is up to MPD to take steps to internally address these underlying issues,” Pirro said in a statement Monday.

Smith, who is stepping down at the end of the year after two years in charge of the department, has said she doesn’t believe any crime numbers were manipulated during her tenure.

“I have never and will never authorize or even support any thought processes or activities with regards to crime numbers being manipulated,” she told Fox 5 during an interview earlier this month.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser on Monday defended Smith’s performance and accused the House committee’s leaders of rushing to judgment “in order to serve a politically motivated timeline.”

“It is my expectation that the crime statistics we publish and rely on are accurate and of the highest quality possible,” Bowser, a Democrat, wrote in a letter addressed to the House committee’s chair and ranking member.

Homicides are down 31% this year, from 181 in 2024 to 125 with two weeks left in 2025, according to police department crime data. Bowser said independent data on hospital visits show a 33% drop in firearm injuries for the first 10 months of 2025 compared to the same period of 2024. The mayor accused the committee of cherry-picking critical quotes from commanders without interviewing Smith or any assistant chiefs.

“Even a cursory review of the report reveals its prejudice: of the 22 block quotes presented as complaining about Chief Smith’s management style, 20 of them were made by only two command officials interviewed,” Bowser wrote.

The House committee said its findings are based in part on interviews with the commanders of all seven D.C. patrol districts and a former commander who is currently on leave. Commanders testified that Smith pushed for a more frequent use of “intermediate” criminal charges that go unreported as opposed to more serious charges that must be publicly reported, according to the committee.

“These combined efforts, as explained by commanders, amounted to manipulating MPD crime statistics in an effort to show lowered rates of crime to the public,” the report says.

Pirro, who was appointed by Trump, said her office reviewed nearly 6,000 police reports and interviewed more than 50 witnesses in concluding that a “significant number of reports had been misclassified, making crime appear artificially lower than it was.”

“The uncovering of these manipulated crime statistics makes clear that President Trump has reduced crime even more than originally thought, since crimes were actually higher than reported,” Pirro’s statement says.

The committee’s Republican chairman, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, said Smith “cultivated a culture of fear to achieve her agenda.”

“Every single person who lives, works, or visits the District of Columbia deserves a safe city, yet it’s now clear the American people were deliberately kept in the dark about the true crime rates in our nation’s capital,” Comer said in a statement.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.