D.C. Police Chief Steps Down Blasting ‘Haters’ Who Say She Incentivized False Crime Statistics

Chief Pamela Smith of the Washington Metropolitan Police concluded her tenure on Friday with a blistering farewell speech, fiercely defending her integrity against recent federal reports that accuse her administration of manipulating crime data for the nation’s capital.Ms. Smith, who served as the first black woman to lead the department, is stepping down after two and a half years. While she announced earlier this month that her decision was personal and aimed at spending more time with family, her departure has been overshadowed by intense scrutiny from Capitol Hill and the Department of Justice.During her final address at police headquarters, which was aired on local TV and radio outlets, Ms. Smith delivered an impassioned, sermon-like defense of her record.“Let’s be really clear about one thing: Never would I, never will I ever compromise my integrity for a few crime numbers,” Ms. Smith said. “Never would I compromise my integrity; never would I compromise 28 years in law enforcement for a few folk who couldn’t stand to be held accountable. And if I had to do it all over again, I’d do it again!”Directing her comments at those who questioned her character, she shouted, “How dare you! How dare you! How dare you attack my integrity, attack my character! You don’t know who I belong to!”In a moment that drew gasps and nervous laughter from the audience, Ms. Smith offered a blunt message to her detractors. “So, I’m going to the Bible when I say this to my haters: F you. No, it’s not a drop-the-mic moment. Watch me in this space. I forgive you.”The controversy centers on conflicting reports regarding the accuracy of the city’s falling crime statistics. A report released Sunday by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee accused Ms. Smith of creating “an ecosystem of fear, retaliation, and toxicity” within the department. The investigation alleged that district commanders were incentivized to downplay crime numbers to avoid retribution from leadership.Parallel to the congressional inquiry, the U.S. Attorney for D.C., Jeanine Pirro, launched a probe into similar allegations. According to a draft report obtained by The Washington Post, the DOJ found that while a “significant number” of crimes had been misclassified, the conduct did not rise to the level of criminal activity.Both the DOJ draft and the House Republican report relied heavily on testimony from eight unnamed high-level police officials. The documents describe a leadership style in which Ms. Smith allegedly berated staffers over statistics, leading to an environment where commanders felt pressured to report lower numbers.On Friday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pushed back with their own report, based on the same interviews with the eight commanders. They characterized the Republican findings as a “far-fetched conspiracy theory” and an “assault on reality.”According to the Democratic rebuttal, the commanders “uniformly” agreed that crime had significantly decreased over the last two years and denied being pressured to falsify data. “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.Shortly before Ms. Smith announced her resignation, the District of Columbia quietly settled a lawsuit with a former police department sergeant who accused department leadership of deliberately misclassifying crimes to manipulate the city’s crime statistics. Charlotte Djossou, who served in Iraq before joining the D.C. police force, filed the lawsuit in 2020, alleging that MPD leaders pressured officers to downgrade offenses, such as theft, knife attacks, and violent assaults, to less severe classifications. According to court documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, the alleged practice was an effort to produce “fewer” felonies in public crime reports.Also, in October, an MPD commander, Michael Pulliam of the Third District, was suspended amid allegations that he falsified crime data. The police union charged that MPD command staff explicitly instructed officers to reclassify felonies as lesser offenses. The union chairman, Gregg Pemberton, said shootings, stabbings, and carjackings are recorded as thefts, injured person calls, or nebulous “felony assaults” that are not standard categories in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting. “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,” Mr. Pemberton told NBC-4 in Washington.“So, instead of taking a report for a shooting or a stabbing or a carjacking, they will order that officer to take a report for a theft or an injured person to the hospital or a felony assault, which is not the same type of classification.”

D.C. Police Chief Steps Down Blasting ‘Haters’ Who Say She Incentivized False Crime Statistics

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