The scrutiny and criticism from the left over President Donald Trump's decision to federalize the Washington, D.C., police department was accompanied by data that purportedly showed violent crime was at a 30-year low in the nation's capital.
But according to analysis done by the Washington Free Beacon, the data produced by city police downgrades certain crimes to be non-violent, following a pattern of rigging crime stats that dates to 2019.
Further, it was reported last month that the Metropolitan Police Department suspended and kicked off an investigation into one of its top commanders for allegedly falsifying crime data in his district.
Washington police crime data show that violent crime is down 26% from 2024. However, D.C. police do not count misdemeanor simple assault as a violent crime; that designation is reserved for "assault with a deadly weapon," a felony, the Free Beacon reported.
"Felony assault is not a category of crime that's listed on the department's daily crime stats," Fraternal Order of Police Chairman Gregg Pemberton told NBC4 last month. "It's also not something that's a requirement of the FBI's uniform crime reporting program. So, by changing criminal offenses from, for example, [assault dangerous weapon] bat or ADW gun to felony assault, that would avoid both the MPD and the FBI from reporting that as a part one or a felony offense."
"Hopefully Pam Bondi's people can get into the D.C. Metro Police Department and do some analysis," National Police Association spokeswoman Betsy Smith told Newsmax on Tuesday. "Really take a look at the crime stats because it's common knowledge in Washington, D.C., that these crime statistics are cooked. Right now, they have an internal investigation against one of the high-level commanders who was caught doing this."
That commander, Michael Pulliam, was placed on leave in May and is being investigated for questionable changes to crime data, NBC4 reported last month.
But that's not the first such investigation.
Two police whistleblowers accused superiors of misreporting violent crimes as misdemeanors at a 2020 city council meeting, citing two crimes in 2019. In one case, a woman was hospitalized after her face and neck were slashed by a man wielding an unknown object, a crime that was reported as "simple assault," not counting as "violent crime," WUSA reported then.
Smith told Newsmax that the DOJ should "talk to the cops, talk to the detectives and find out what really happens" to help the department fix the problem "instead of just this revolving door of quote, unquote, justice in D.C."
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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