The Trump administration no longer believes the crime statistics provided by the Metropolitan Police Department.
The Justice Department announced a criminal investigation into the Washington police department Tuesday to determine whether the law enforcement bureau had manipulated data to make crime in the city seem lower than officers have claimed, reported The Washington Post.
Donald Trump had highlighted the conspiracy the night before. “D.C. gave Fake Crime numbers in order to create a false illusion of safety,” he wrote on Truth Social Monday night, confirming the existence of the probe.
“This is a very bad and dangerous thing to do, and they are under serious investigation for so doing!” he continued. “Until 4 days ago, Washington, D.C., was the most unsafe ‘city’ in the United States, and perhaps the World. Now, in just a short period of time, it is perhaps the safest, and getting better every single hour!”
Trump deployed 800 National Guard members to Washington and federalized the capital’s police department last week to combat what he described as a crime-riddled hellscape. To justify the government infringement, the president pointed to rising crime rates, immigrant populations, and homelessness—though the figures he used were from 2023, before violent crime plummeted across the country.
More recent numbers from the Metropolitan Police Department told a remarkably different story: Crime in the nation’s capital was actually down 35 percent in 2024 compared to the year prior. The decline tracked with a nationwide crime drop that saw homicide rates plummet across the country. They have continued to descend this year.
“According to local police data, violent crime is down 27 percent over this time last year, with homicides down 11 percent,” reported the Post.
Those digits were sunny enough that FBI Director Kash Patel used them to pat the Trump administration on the back during a press conference last week, claiming that the “plummeting” homicide numbers were thanks to the president’s policies.
“We are now able to report that the murder rate is on track to be the lowest in U.S. history,” Patel said at the time, unraveling Trump’s rationale for forcing MPD and the D.C. National Guard to take over the nation’s capital moments after the president announced the directive.
On Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the administration had made nearly 400 arrests since the beginning of the operation. At least 160 of those arrests were undocumented immigrants, reported ABC News.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is no stranger to manipulating data. Another branch of the government—the Bureau of Labor Statistics—is on its own quest to cook up flattering jobs numbers after its July report indicated that the job market had steadily lost employment since Trump announced his “liberation day” tariff plan.
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