Crime Data Scandal in DC Vindicates Trump’s National Guard Intervention

President Donald Trump took decisive action last year to halt crime in Washington, and the results have been spectacular.

But that success now looks even more impressive considering recent reports that high-ranking members of the Metropolitan Police Department had been previously cooking the books to create the mirage that crime was lower than it was.

The House Oversight Committee released a report in December uncovering that during its investigation of crime in the capital, it heard “testimonies from commanders that there are clear pressures placed on MPD personnel to lower the classifications of crime to present to the public the perception of low crime in the District.”

The police commanders said, according to the committee, that “on numerous occasions, they were not only pressured, but also instructed, to lower crime classifications to lesser intermediate offenses in such a way that those offenses would not be included in the DCR reported to the public.”

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said Friday in an interview with Fox News that her office conducted a review as well and found that 50 witnesses and more than 6,000 police reports backed up the claim that there was tampering with the crime stats.

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Former Police Chief Pamela Smith, who resigned at the end of 2025, citing a desire to spend more time with family, denied that she knew of any crime data manipulation.

But MPD acted after Smith resigned. Its Internal Affairs Bureau conducted an investigation and decided to reprimand over a dozen senior staff members in connection to crime data manipulation.

“We use crime statistics every day to help us with deployment across the city. I do have confidence in those numbers,” MPD Interim Chief Jeffery Carroll said on Wednesday. “We don’t want to minimize any crime. Obviously, we want to make sure crimes are appropriately classified. We’ll continue to work with that, making sure officers have the appropriate classification.”

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said that for those who manipulated data “there are repercussions for that.”

According to Fox 5, 13 senior MPD officials have been placed on administrative leave in connection with this scandal.

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said in a statement that he will continue to pursue this case.

“Every single person who lives, works, or visits our nation’s capital deserves a safe city, yet it’s clear the American people were deliberately kept in the dark about the true crime rates in Washington,” he wrote. “Our work is not done. I expect to receive MPD’s internal report and all related documents to ensure crime data is reported accurately and that anyone responsible for manipulation is held accountable.”

There’s a lot to unpack here.

The crime stats revelation absolutely vindicates Trump, both his criticism of the crime reporting and his decision to intervene to protect D.C. residents. In August, Trump announced after the murder of two embassy staffers that the District of Columbia “has lost control of public order and safety in the city.”

Crime in the city had become a “national disgrace,” he said, and therefore it was his “duty to our citizens and Federal workers to secure the safety and the peaceful functioning of our Nation, the Federal Government, and our city.”

Trump called the stats showing lower crime in the city a “fraud” and called up the National Guard to help enforce the law and tackle the crime issue head-on.

Democrats and their media allies were apoplectic about this decision, of course.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Washington Democrat, said the move was a “historic assault on D.C. home rule.”

To which I say: “Is that a bad thing?”

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., called the move an act of “revenge.”

In fairness to Democrats, I can see why they wouldn’t want residents to think that the crime issue can just be solved under new management.

The New York Times also blasted Trump and reported that “Trump Misstates Washington Crime Data to Justify Takeover.” In their fact check of the president, the Times cited data from 2024 showing that crime was already going down.

But as we’ve now learned, Trump was correct. Violent crime was still acute and in desperate need of addressing. Now, crime reductions aren’t just happening on manipulated spreadsheets.

Violent crime in the District really is plummeting across the board thanks to the National Guard, an aggressive U.S. attorney who wants to prosecute crimes, and a president who decided enough was enough.

The leftists and unemployed deep state bureaucrats will surely go on hating the president, but a lot of lives have been saved because he prioritized genuine safety over the excuses and false assurances of D.C. leadership class.