WaPo Admits Internal DC Police Scandal Over Manipulated Crime Stats
So the thing they said wasn't happening during the election...
This article originally appeared on ZeroHedge and was republished with permission.
Guest post by Tyler Durden
Five weeks ago, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller announced that there was an ongoing DOJ investigation into whether Washington D.C. officials manipulated crime statistics - calling it a “massive scandal.”
Specifically, Miller said:
“There’s even accusations that murders and homicides were reported as accidents.“
See 55 second mark:
One day after Miller’s late-August announcement, National Police Association spox Betsy Smith told ABC4 News in a little-noticed report that “Commanders and supervisors were having the initial responding officers write the report differently than what they were called to, or different than what they physically saw on the scene.“
And while the DC Police Department has been run by Democrats for decades - frustrated cops have been talking to the DOJ and have receipts, presented with a bow by D.C. Police Union Chairman Greggory Pemberton. Read on...
On Sunday, the Washington Post revealed internal accusations that “managers were recording serious crimes as more minor ones to make their police districts appear safer or avoid the ire of top department brass” - and that officers and supervisors ‘clashed’ over “whether an offense was a robbery or a theft, or whether a weapon used in an assault qualified as potentially deadly.”
The frustrated officers “kept lists, documenting cases where they believed a higher-up improperly classified a crime as a lesser offense,” with one noting 150 such instances in March of 2024 alone in which staff in the Southeast D.C. police district believed offenses were in appropriately classified.
“The police department is playing fast and loose with how they report their data so that they can report favorably to the citizens about crime, and I don’t think it’s fair to the city,” said Pemberton - who’s been assisting the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans with ‘information compiled by officers.’
So, a group of pissed off cops within the DC police department have been fighting with superiors and keeping notes over misclassified crimes, and kept notes. Now they’re working with the feds to blow the lid. Or as WaPo puts it - “found a receptive audience.”
We’re sure the galaxy brains over at FactCheck.org are getting right on that correction after saying President Trump ‘wrongly’ claimed that his DC crackdown resulted in 11 days with no murders, the “first time that’s taken place in years.” They of course make no mention of the DOJ / Congressional investigation Miller announced two days earlier.
And of course, a July report by NBC Washington that MPD District 3 Commander Michael Pulliam was suspended and placed under investigation for allegedly manipulating crime data - however Stephen Miller said it was being done “on a widespread basis” - so more than just that sacrificial lamb.
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WaPo Spin
Of course this Sunday night report is all about frontrunning the DOJ release - and narrative control. Such as that it could have simply been an initial lack of evidence - writing that “Criminologists say [zh: wait for it] classifying crimes is an often subjective and evolving process: Incidents can be redefined as investigators uncover more evidence, and disagreements don’t necessarily point to corruption.” And who’s the one criminologist they cited? “Alexis Piquero, a criminologist at the University of Miami who led the Bureau of Justice Statistics during the Biden administration,” who “cautioned against jumping to conclusions that D.C. police were purposefully concealing violent crimes.”
Right, yes.
Recall that during the 2024 election, Democrats insisted that crime had fallen under the Biden administration, contrary to your lying eyes. They smugly pointed to FBI crime stats published in 2023 by Biden’s FBI - showing that the nation’s violent crime rate had fallen in 2022 by 1.7%. Leftist pundits and academics alike used it for a collective ‘ackchyually’ whenever Trump and his allies would point out the rampant crime gripping Democrat-run cities.
Then, in the home stretch of the election when Trump was clearly ahead (and before Kash Patel could go ‘Ah-ha!’), the 2022 figures were revised - revealing that crime had actually increased by 4.5% in 2022. This textbook Ministry of Truth ‘correction’ was uncovered by John Lott Jr. and published Oct. 16.
Amazing...
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