DC police union says crime stats are manipulated by department heads to downplay violence

High-profile Democrats, including Senator Patty Murray and Hillary Clinton, have repeated a similar statistic in recent days, saying that violent crime in DC is at a “30-year low.” But the city’s police union says the numbers are misleading and that crime data is being deliberately altered to mask the extent of violence on the city’s streets.

“When our members respond to the scene of a felony offense where there is a victim reporting that a felony occurred, inevitably there will be a lieutenant or a captain that will show up on that scene and direct those members to take a report for a lesser offense,” Fraternal Order of Police Chairman Gregg Pemberton explained to reporters at NBC 4 Washington.

An MPD commander was placed on administrative leave in May after the DC Fraternal Order of Police accused officials of manipulating crime statistics.

Pemberton alleged that officers are being directed to downgrade serious offenses such as shootings, stabbings, and carjackings to lesser charges like theft or “injured person” reports to keep official numbers low.

“When management officials are directing officers to take reports for felony assault, or if they’re going back into police databases and changing offenses to felony assault, felony assault is not a category of crime that’s listed on the department’s daily crime stats,” he continued. “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, ADW 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.”

“What we’ve heard through our members and through members of management that were willing to talk with the union is that this is a directive from the command staff, is that they wanna make sure that these classifications of these reports are adjusted over time to make sure that the overall crime stats stay down.” Pemberton added.

Pemberton further called the crime statistics being cited to claim crime is down in DC “preposterous.” He added, “There's absolutely no way crime could be down 28%. Last year they suggested that it went down 34%.”

The White House issued a fact sheet Monday titled “FACT: Yes, D.C. Crime Is Out of Control,” citing data to justify federal intervention in the nation’s capital. The report claimed that in 2024, DC had a homicide rate of 27.3 per 100,000 residents, the fourth-highest in the nation. If counted as a state, DC would have the highest homicide rate in the country. The rate has nearly doubled from 2012, when it stood at 13.9.

So far in 2025, nearly 1,600 violent crimes and almost 16,000 total crimes have been reported in the city, with vehicle thefts occurring at three times the national average.