WASHINGTON — DC Police Chief Pamela Smith pushed officers to lower crime statistics “by any means necessary,” including by categorizing even some violent offenses so they weren’t reported publicly, according to a scathing congressional report issued Sunday.
The findings cast doubt on city data showing violent crime fell by 35% and property crime by 11% last year — and offer support for President Trump’s claims that data was forged to create an illusion of safety, which he also claimed when launching a federal policing surge in August.
Interviews with seven of the DC police’s district commanders revealed to the House Oversight Committee that their chief pushed them to misclassify some assault and burglary charges, “would be upset” over the daily tally of publicly reported crimes and, at times, berate them for reporting the statistics on the ground.
One of those commanders — the 3rd District’s Michael Pulliam — was suspended and put on paid leave after being accused of fudging that data.
There are four types of violent crime and five property crimes regularly reported to the public every day — including homicide, sexual abuse, assault with a dangerous weapon, robbery, burglary, motor vehicle theft, theft from a vehicle, other theft and arson.
The report was issued mere days after DC Mayor Muriel Bowser abruptly announced on Dec. 8 that Smith, in office since July 2023, would resign this month — and ahead of a parallel Justice Department report that’s expected to make similar findings.
“Chief Smith, [police district] commanders testified, was so preoccupied with the statistics of the select crimes that were made public that she incentivized her subordinates to lower those crimes by whatever means necessary,” the 21-page House Oversight Committee report stated.
The Republican-led committee informed Bowser’s office of the contents of its investigation at the end of October, a person familiar with the review told The Post. Smith’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether her resignation was connected.
The committee interviewed all seven DC police commanders assigned to specific geographic zones to vet allegations that cops were being told to downgrade criminal charges. The DC Police Union made those accusations earlier this year.
Officers have for years sought approval from superiors when making charges in ambiguous circumstances, but the committee said that Smith atypically required approval directly from her team, including from executive assistant chiefs of police.
“Commanders testified that Chief Smith established expectations that commanders must make their superiors aware — who in turn must communicate to Chief Smith — that the crimes which will affect MPD data reports have occurred,” according to the committee.
“Chief Smith required that she be informed of such crime reports prior to them being classified in the system. Commanders are required to engage in this arduous approval process immediately upon learning of the crime and prior to the crime being put into the MPD records system, where it can impact public statistics.”
One DC police commander testified that there was an aversion to making “assault with a dangerous weapon” charges and that an executive assistant chief of police required at least one such case to be labeled as “endangerment with a firearm” because the bullet missed its intended target.
“There is a direction to get away from the ADW [assault with a dangerous weapon charge] because, again, the focus of this executive management has been on the crime numbers,” said that police commander.
“The chief has required that [an approval process] happens before a classification is made and numbers are drawn for those offenses. This is new to this chief and these executives. This is never something that’s occurred before in our agency.”
A second police commander said they were shocked by burglaries being categorized as “unlawful entry.”
“When I first took over the district, I would see a call come in for a burglary and then I would look on my watch commander report, and I would see that it was classified as an unlawful entry and a theft,” the second commander said, whose excerpted testimony doesn’t make clear when he assumed his role.
“It piqued my interest. I’d go read the report, and it would read like a burglary. It would say so and so came home after a day out and found their door open and their TV missing from their wall. That’s the elements of a burglary. Is it also an unlawful entry and a theft? Technically. But the proper charge would be burglary, but unlawful entry doesn’t hit the [daily crime report] status of burglary. So maybe my burglaries are down now even though I had a ton of unlawful entries’.”
A third commander said Smith “would be upset with the [daily crime report] crimes… because those are the [publicly] reported crimes.”
The third commander said that they were berated by Smith for reporting robbery sprees in their district.
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“I think I had, like, 13 robberies in over a night period, a day period… 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,” they said.
“It was embarrassing, but it happened. And then it stemmed [from] 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.”
The Metropolitan Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.
When Trump seized control of policing in the capital — after the fatal shooting of a congressional intern and the assault of a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee — local officials pointed to crime data showing declines in serious offenses.
Bowser pushed back initially on Trump’s federalization by saying he was wrong in describing the city’s crime as out of control and that, in fact, “we’ve seen numbers go down — let me be clear. Over the last two years we have reached a 30-year low and violent crime.”
The mayor later praised the federal crackdown and authorized an indefinite deployment of National Guard troops and other federal agents in the nation’s capital to support the local police.
Trump argued while launching the crackdown on Aug. 11 that crime “is getting worse. Not getting better, it’s getting worse.
“We had a recent indication. There was a story about a man who was — just left. He quit because he was asked to do phony numbers on crime, and we’re going to look into that,” Trump said.
