Democrats on the House Oversight Committee responded Friday to a scathing report about D.C. police, saying their Republican counterparts were peddling a “far-fetched conspiracy theory” that the department was covering up crime.
Using the same interviews conducted with eight D.C. police commanders, the report from Democrats painted a wholly different picture than the one issued Sunday by Republicans that accused D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith of creating “an ecosystem of fear, retaliation, and toxicity” that incentivized commanders to downplay crimes in their districts.
Democrats surfaced different quotes from the interviews with commanders, showing them testifying that crime was unquestionably down in D.C. and telling House investigators that they generally found D.C. police crime data to be accurate.
“From start to finish, it has been clear that Oversight Republicans’ failed investigation was an assault on reality at the behest of an unstable President angry at a police department for doing its job,” the Democrats wrote.
The conflicting reports arrived in the final weeks of Smith’s tenure at the department. She announced this month that she would be leaving her position at the end of the year. The police union criticized the decision as suspiciously timed, though Smith maintains it was motivated by her desire to spend more time with her family and unrelated to federal scrutiny.
“Never will I ever compromise my integrity for a few crime numbers,” Smith said Friday to rapturous applause during a ceremony marking her departure. “Never would I compromise 28 years in law enforcement.”
Neither of the congressional reports delved rigorously into data, instead relying on the testimony of the eight high-level police officials. In the absence of hard evidence confirming whether D.C. crime data has been manipulated — and whether Smith ever directed anyone to downplay crime — Republicans have used the subject to justify President Donald Trump’s summer declaration of a “crime emergency” in D.C. while Democrats have sought to counter the narrative and argue in favor of continued local control.
Trump’s interest in D.C.’s crime data intensified over the summer, as he publicly raised doubt about the validity of D.C. police data that showed a precipitous drop in crime. Trump had at the same time launched an unprecedented wave of federal force into D.C.’s public safety system, seizing temporary control of the city’s police department, surging federal law enforcement onto city streets and deploying the National Guard to the city’s Metro stations and parks.
D.C. officials have refuted Trump’s claim about crime, asserting that the city’s statistics are reliable and corroborated by independent sources of data, including hospital data showing significantly fewer gunshot victims. Homicides, perhaps the most difficult category of crime to hide, have dropped significantly for two straight years in the city after a generational spike in killings in 2023. As of Friday, homicides were down 31 percent compared to last year, according to D.C. police data.
U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro and the House Oversight Committee also launched a pair of probes into D.C.’s police department, seeking to investigate whether crime data was manipulated. A draft report from her office mirrored accusations from House Republicans, slamming Smith’s leadership style, accusing her of creating a toxic environment, berating her commanders over crime statistics and incentivizing them to misclassify crimes to avoid her ire. In a statement Monday, Pirro said her office found a “significant number” of crimes had been misclassified but the conduct wasn’t criminal.
Neither the DOJ report — an interim draft obtained by The Washington Post — nor the House Oversight interim report appeared to rigorously audit crime classifications by reinterviewing witnesses or examining underlying investigative documents.
Instead, the documents largely focused on Smith’s leadership, describing her as publicly berating staffers or in some cases ousting them if they were seen as disloyal to her.
“Without the commanders’ testimony, Chief Smith’s abuse of power would have continued to this day,” a spokesman for House Oversight Republicans said Friday, criticizing Democrats for continuing “to defend the failed status quo.”
Both the DOJ and House Republican reports highlighted testimony from police officials who said they felt pressured to report lower crime numbers to avoid retribution.
The House Democrats, however, reached a different conclusion after examining the interviews with commanders. Their report highlighted testimony from police officials who said they had not experienced pressure to change crime classifications — and that instead they were incentivized to report the numbers accurately.
“If I’m hiding crime numbers, then the chief of police is going to, rightfully so, take resources out of my district and send them somewhere else, and I don’t want that,” said one commander.
Democrats also said the commanders “uniformly” agreed that crime had decreased significantly over the past two years.
“I’ve lived that. I’ve experienced that. We are nowhere near where we were in 2023,” said one commander quoted in their report.
None of the reports name the police officials who were interviewed.
The Democrats’ report also injected additional nuance into the subject of crime statistics, pointing out that several commanders noted how crime classifications are subjective and can change as police acquire more information about an incident.
And the Democrats offered a competing pictures of Trump’s interference in the city’s policing. While the Republicans highlighted testimony of the commanders who described federal law enforcement as a “force multiplier” that helped reduce crime, Democrats quoted commanders who affirmed the importance of local control over policing and home rule. “I may not always agree with the [D.C.] Council [but] I think they serve an important and critical role in our city,” said one official.
The Democratic report did not, however, address the broader concerns about Smith’s leadership style or treatment of her staff.
In a blistering letter to committee leaders this week, Bowser slammed the Republican report as biased and rushed, accusing them of “using cherry-picked quotes without providing additional relevant context.”
Her administration “fully cooperated” with the committee during the investigative process, she wrote, and called the publication “a disappointing rejection of that good faith approach.”
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