When President Trump started sending national guard troops into high crime cities, we were bombarded with “news” that there was no need for them because crime had dropped so much without them.
But there were also reports put out by law enforcement and Republicans that the numbers were being doctored; that they were still terrible, but being manipulated to create an illusion of improvement.
So which was true?
Here’s an indication for you, via the following excerpts from Wendi Strauch Mahoney’s article for American Thinker:
Leadership at the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) under former chief Pamela A. Smith (who announced on Dec. 8 she would step down at year’s end) reportedly “deliberately” suppressed or distorted crime statistics in the nation’s capital “to lower public-facing crime rates,” according to a 22-page interim report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The Committee opened the inquiry on Aug. 25, 2025, after reports suggested that crime statistics were being manipulated downward.
District commanders consistently testified that Chief Smith created a “toxic management culture,” resulting in officers suffering “frustration and exhaustion” and a fear of retaliation by Smith. Commanders feared public humiliation for reporting “bad news” to Smith, particularly about “any rise in public crime statistics.” As a result, public-facing crime statistics were not reliably reported, according to the report.
The report states that district commanders described leadership priorities as shifting toward reducing the specific crimes that appear in the public “Daily Crime Report (DCR)” — a public-facing dataset limited to nine felony categories — and using classification practices to keep incidents out of those reportable buckets. The nine felony categories are homicide, sex abuse, assault with a dangerous weapon (ADW), robbery, burglary, motor vehicle theft, theft from auto, theft (other), and arson.
Other police departments manipulate crime stats, too
MPD is not the only police department to have documented instances of downgrading or misclassification of crimes.
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- In 2013, the New York Police Department (NYPD)’s 81st Precinct faced allegations that victims were discouraged from filing reports or that reports were not properly filed, among other issues. An internal review “confirmed manipulation of crime stats.”
- In 2014, the Office of the Inspector General of the City of New Orleans audited the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) on its reporting of forcible rape and reported that 46% of tested offenses were misclassified as sexual battery, miscellaneous, or unfounded. Miscellaneous misclassifications were not captured in UCR reporting.
- A 2012 Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) crime data audit reported 5,307 under-reported incidents during a targeted audit with aggravated assaults being coded downward.
- Also in 2012, according to local reporting, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) found a measurable error rate in classifying assaults. Again, such misreporting affects UCR reporting.
There’s a pretty clear answer for you. A pretty clear indication of how data can be fudged to make politicians look good, while leaving the people they are supposed to represent, to protect, just as unsafe/just as threatened, if not even more so.
Now: remember how much reporting our mainstream media pumped out featuring these apparently bogus “reduced crime” statistics when Trump sent in the National Guard, to show how unnecessary his action was?
Well, how much reporting do you figure they’ll provide on what, it seems obvious, is a huge story: how phony-baloney the data they based their reporting on was? How unsafe, how threatened people in those places really were
Let’s come back to this in a few days and discuss the answer. But I think I already know what it will be. And I’m taking bets…and giving odds.
