Crime reporting oversight at D.C.’s police department experienced a “prolonged, systemic breakdown” over the past decade as the department operated with outdated policies and failed to properly review its crime reports for accuracy, the city’s inspector general found in an investigation released Tuesday.
The inspector general’s report adds to a growing number of probes into crime statistics and reporting at the department, including an internal investigation that resulted in the proposed firing of 13 top police officials and investigations by the Department of Justice and Congress that heaped scrutiny on D.C. police leadership.
In addition to roiling the department for the past year, the inquiries have placed the city in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, which has been eager to flex its authority over the nation’s capital. Last year, when President Donald Trump took the unprecedented step of seizing temporary control of the city police department despite a precipitous drop in violence, he justified the move by alleging that police officials had manipulated crime statistics to make the city appear safer than it actually was.
Now, the inspector general’s report — and the response from interim D.C. Police Chief Jeffery Carroll, who said he agreed with all of its findings and was already taking steps to reform the department’s crime-reporting practices — chart one path forward for the department as it continues to wrestle with the fallout from the controversy.
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Police officers and close observers of crime generally do not doubt that the city has grown significantly safer after a generational spike in violent crime in 2023. Homicides — perhaps the most challenging crime to conceal — have dropped every year since, according to D.C. police data.
The OIG audit did not examine whether the department has been reporting crime statistics accurately. Instead, investigators looked into whether the department had adequate quality-control systems for crime data and reporting. They found several significant shortcomings.
A spokesperson for D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who requested the inspector general’s investigation, declined to comment on the findings.
NBC4 Washington was first to report on a draft of the report.
The police department shut down an independent unit that reviewed crime reports for accuracy in 2013, and its records system also failed to flag reports with classification errors or incomplete narratives, leaving them uncorrected, the report said.
In the absence of an independent review unit, ensuring the accuracy of crime reports fell on district commanders and their teams, who are stretched for time, and identifying mistakes “depended largely on individual initiative rather than structured oversight,” investigators wrote.
The police department’s policies are also outdated and incomplete, according to the report, which said that officers are subject to a “patchwork of overlapping and sometimes conflicting policies” on how to report crime. About a third of the department’s general orders, the rules that govern officer behavior, are more than 20 years old. Some of the policies about crime reporting reference the independent review unit that no longer exists, for example, or refer to a computer system that the department no longer uses. And, significantly, no single document describes how crime should be classified and reported from start to finish, according to the audit.
Investigators also found that cultural issues have hampered the department: In interviews, officers described an environment where they felt hesitant to express concerns about crime reporting because they feared retaliation and had no way to submit anonymous complaints.
The report noted that concerns about crime statistics are not unique to the District.
“Research has consistently found that when the same personnel responsible for crime reporting are also the ones whose performance is measured by that crime data, there is an inherent incentive to influence the numbers,” it said.
The department has already taken some steps over the past several months to address the concerns brought up by the audit, the report said, including launching mandatory training on crime classification for officers and starting to reestablish an independent unit to review police reports for quality and accuracy. Carroll, in a letter responding to the audit, said he agreed with all of its core findings and said his goal was to ensure “strict accountability across the department.”
As Carroll seeks to tackle the systemic problems identified by the inspector general, lengthy discipline proceedings will continue for the top officials accused of improperly changing or manipulating crime reports. Those discipline recommendations came out of a 554-page internal affairs investigation that painted a picture of a department where officials struggled with immense pressure to reduce crime in their districts — pressure that led some of them to violate department policy, investigators allege.
Several police officials stand accused of pressuring officers to classify violent assaults, robberies and thefts as lesser offenses, according to a copy of the investigation, which concluded in the spring and has been reviewed by NOTUS. Others are accused of improperly editing police reports, either at the direction of a higher-up or of their own accord. The department has not released the investigation, in keeping with its policy of not revealing those disciplinary records to the public.
The internal probe, along with previous investigations conducted by the Justice Department and Republicans in Congress, also criticized the leadership of former D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith, who resigned in December. Though she said she did not resign because of the inquiries into crime statistics, Smith’s departure came after a draft report from the Justice Department and a published report from Republicans on the House Oversight Committee both excoriated her leadership, accusing her of creating a climate of fear that incentivized commanders to artificially suppress reports of serious crimes.
The D.C. police internal affairs investigation featured interviews with officials who said Smith would frequently berate top command staff. It concluded that her treatment of those under her command had a “drastic and negative effect” on the department, but did not find that Smith had personally ordered anyone to misclassify a crime.
Smith has repeatedly denied claims that she manipulated statistics. Bowser defended the police chief, too; she requested the inspector general’s probe after the release of the DOJ and House Oversight probes, saying she hoped the city office would provide a less biased perspective.
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