How can it be that almost every resident of Washington D.C. (91% according to a Washington Post poll) believes crime is a “serious problem”, but Democrats still claim crime is down/less of a problem than it used to be?
Here’s one answer for you, from Emma Colton’s article at Fox News, via msn.com (did you really expect this from CNN, or MSNBC, or the NY Times, or the LA Times, etc. etc. etc.?):
Just weeks before President Donald Trump federalized the Washington, D.C., police force over crime woes, the Metropolitan Police Department was hit with accusations of allegedly juking crime stats for more favorable results.
“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,” D.C. Police Union chairman Gregg Pemberton told NBC Washington in July of an alleged trend to manipulate crime stats.
“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.”
The accusations from the union chief followed the police department suspending Washington, D.C., police commander Michael Pulliam in mid-May for allegedly changing crime statistics in his district, local media reported in July.
In other words, crime is not down. Reporting of crime is down. Intentionally, to make things look better than they are. And you can bet that if they were doing it as Ms. Colton describes in her article, they were doing it other ways as well.
So who does this help and who does it hurt?
It helps the politicians who run D.C. – every one a Democrat – who can then look you in the eye and lie to you that crime is down (look at what a great job we’re doing).
It hurts every resident of Washington D.C., who, until now, has had to continue enduring the huge amount of crime there with little or nothing being done about it (Why should anything be done? After all, look at how much lower the crime rate is).
If President Trump’s sending of 800 National Guard personnel into D.C. winds up having a material affect on how much crime is being committed/how many criminals are being arrrested there, I wonder how that will play with the city’s residents who, for many years, have voted almost uniformly for Democrats…
…and how it will play in other cities where crime is also up and the mayors are vowing to fight national guard troops being sent in.
This could wind up being a major – even a huge – issue of the 2026 midterm elections.
Time will tell.
