Jeffery Carroll, the D.C. police department’s second-in-command, will serve as interim police chief after Chief Pamela A. Smith leaves the department at the end of the year, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser announced Wednesday.
Carroll, a 23-year veteran of the department, is one of two executive assistant chiefs. He had been tasked with leading the relationship between D.C. police and their federal partners during the law enforcement surge first orderedin August by President Donald Trump, then extended by Bowser. As part of this role, he has attended weekly White House meetings led by Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
“The department has been through an incredibly challenging year, and that’s on top of the day-to-day challenges that our men and women of Metropolitan Police Department face every single day to keep our city safe,” Bowser said during a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “I am confident that Chief Carroll is the right leader to meet this moment.”
Carroll was the face of D.C. police after two National Guard members were shot outside the White House complex the day before Thanksgiving, standing at the scene between Bowser and FBI Director Kash Patel (who introduced Carroll during the news conference as chief of the police department). Smith was not present and told Fox5 she was with family in Arkansas over Thanksgiving.
“I’m committed to leading this department with integrity, transparency and a strong sense of duty to the people that we serve,” Carroll said at the news conference.
Smith announced her resignation last week after two years marked by a steep drop in crime and escalating federal incursion into the District’s policing. Smith said she is stepping down at the end of the year to spend more time with family. Days later, separate reports from the Justice Department and House Oversight Committee tore into her leadership style, accusing her of incentivizing her subordinates to manipulate city crime statistics.
Based on interviews with all seven current D.C. police district commanders, plus one who’s on leave, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee said Smith “propagated an ecosystem of fear, retaliation, and toxicity.” In a letter to the congressional committee, Bowser slammed the interim report, which was released early to add context to Smith’s resignation, as “a rush to judgement to serve a politically motivated timeline.”
Carroll was not named in either of the reports.
Carroll joined D.C. police in 2002 as a fresh graduate of Towson University in Maryland and got his start patrolling the Third District, which includes parts of Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, Shaw and Logan Circle. He rose through the ranks, working as a patrol captain, then commander of the department’s Special Operations division.
Later, as the head of the police department’s homeland security bureau, he led the response to high-profile incidents including the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and two presidential inaugurations. He briefly led the department’s internal affairs bureau, before Smith appointed him as her right-hand man amid a generational surge in violent crime in 2023.
“My heart’s here with the agency,” he said Wednesday.
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