DOJ investigates DC’s crime statistics amid allegations of manipulated data.
As we’ve all heard in the past week, crime in DC was down sharply last year, though it remains much higher than in other blue cities like New York and Los Angeles. But questions have been raised about how reliable the DC crime statistics really are. It started with an allegation from the police union last month:
The union claims police supervisors in the department manipulate crime data to make it appear violent crime has fallen considerably compared to last year.
“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.”
Beege wrote about a story from the Washington Free Beacon which revealed a former DC cop had sued the department in 2020 for tweaking the crime stats.
Former MPD sergeant Charlotte Djossou sued the department in 2020, alleging that police leadership punished her for speaking out against the scheme. Djossou, who joined the force after serving honorably in Iraq, accused MPD brass of attempting to „distort crime statistics“ by „downgrading a number of felonies to misdemeanors, so that there will be ‚fewer‘ felonies in the statistics.
