The Left repeatedly used local police statistics to suggest President Donald Trump was overreacting to crime in Washington, D.C. — but a watchdog agency’s report casts further doubt on the data.
D.C.’s Office of the Inspector General exposed a “prolonged, systemic breakdown” in how the Metropolitan Police Department documented crime in a Tuesday report first revealed by ABC7. MPD employees told the inspector general’s office about how “supervisory personnel influenced crime classifications to align with anticipated or desired crime trends,” among other investigative findings, the report said.
Trump triggered debate about how dire public safety really is in the nation’s capital after launching a wide-ranging policing surge in August 2025. Democratic lawmakers, liberal media outlets, and Democratic D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser often cited MPD data to claim Trump exaggerated crime rates, despite the fact that the MPD was already investigating allegations that personnel were falsifying the numbers. The D.C. inspector general’s report now affirms conservatives’ suspicions, describing how the MPD’s crime reporting processes since 2015 were unclear, opaque, lacked oversight, and controlled by certain higher-ups with their own agendas.
“Every person who lives, works, or visits our nation’s capital deserves a safe city — and they deserve honest crime data,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, a Trump appointee, told the Washington Examiner. Pirro announced in December that her office also found evidence the MPD manipulated the statistics, and the D.C. inspector general’s office began its work a month later.
“We began our investigation in August, before anyone else, because we had serious concerns that the numbers being presented to the public did not match what was happening on the streets,” Pirro told the Washington Examiner. “The people of Washington and the American public deserve transparency, accountability, and the truth about public safety.”
‘A false illusion of safety’
Former President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice boasted in January 2025 that D.C.’s violent crime had hit a 30-year low under former U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves’s leadership. Trump took a different approach after returning to office.
The president lost his patience with D.C. crime in August, calling America’s capital “out of control” and making several public safety changes after a former federal staffer was beaten while responding to a carjacking. Trump temporarily took federal control of the MPD, increased federal officer presence on D.C. streets, and began making the National Guard patrol the district.
Bowser initially rebutted Trump’s claims. “We are not experiencing a spike in crime,” she told the press in August. “In fact, we’re watching our crime numbers go down.” Numerous media outlets also cited the MPD to fact-check Trump and portray D.C.’s public safety situation as improving.
Trump’s officials later presented data from outside MPD to paint the opposite picture, including Rochester Institute of Technology research that ranked D.C.’s murder rate the fourth-highest in the U.S. in 2024.
The mayor later credited Trump’s efforts with a drop in D.C. violent crime in August and ordered the MPD to continue cooperating with federal law enforcement in September, days before Trump’s federalization of the MPD expired. She also asked the D.C. inspector general to look into the alleged statistical manipulation after Trump, Pirro, and the GOP-led House oversight committee raised concerns.
“D.C. gave Fake Crime numbers in order to create a false illusion of safety,” Trump said in an August Truth Social post.
Bowser’s office declined to comment to the Washington Examiner.
A December House Oversight Democrat staff report also tore into their Republican colleagues’ “far-fetched conspiracy theory” about the MPD’s data. “The Trump Administration’s pretext for its deployment of the National Guard and attempted takeover of MPD rested on false statements about crime in D.C.,” the House Democrats claimed.
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“President Trump’s [August 2025] executive order falsely stated that there was an ‘increase in violent crime,’ when in fact D.C. was experiencing a rapid and sustained decrease in violent crime, a trend that continues to this day,” the report said, citing legacy media fact-check coverage in a footnote.
The office of Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the committee’s ranking Democrat, did not respond to a request for comment.