Members of a U.S. House committee have sharply criticized Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith, accusing her of overseeing the manipulation of crime data to make Washington, DC appear safer than it is. The allegations are laid out in an interim report released by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, marking the second federal rebuke of the chief in just two days.
The report claims Smith directed commanders to downgrade crime classifications, reducing the number of serious offenses reflected in publicly reported statistics. According to the committee, the goal was to create the impression that crime in the nation’s capital was declining, even when internal data suggested otherwise.
