Thirteen Washington, D.C., police officials are on administrative leave and some face termination after investigators concluded they played roles in what critics call a sweeping scheme to cook the capital's crime books, making the city look safer than it was.

MPD Interim Chief Jeffrey Carroll confirmed the suspensions, telling reporters that the department's Internal Affairs Bureau completed its investigation into crime reporting practices. Some of the suspended officers are already in termination proceedings, Fox News reported. The probe was referred to MPD earlier this year by the United States Attorney's Office, and senior officials including an assistant chief and a district commander are under scrutiny.

Carroll's statement was brief but pointed.

"Our Internal Affairs Bureau has completed an investigation into crime reporting."

The D.C. Police Union, which has pushed for accountability from the start, framed the personnel actions as overdue. In a press release, the union called the removals a "long overdue step toward justice and the restoration of integrity within MPD."

The numbers that didn't add up

At the center of the scandal is a jarring statistical contradiction. City officials had publicly touted a 28.32 percent decrease in violent crime for 2024. But internal data told a very different story. The D.C. Police Union pointed to National Incident-Based Reporting System figures submitted to the FBI showing a 1.72 percent increase in violent crime for the same period.

"Internal National Incident-Based Reporting System data reported to the FBI showed a 1.72% increase in violent crime for 2024, directly contradicting the D.C. government's fabricated 28.32% decrease."

That gap is not a rounding error. It is, if the union's numbers hold, evidence that someone inside the department systematically reclassified or downgraded offenses to produce a rosy public picture while the real data, filed quietly with federal authorities, showed crime ticking upward.

Among those placed on administrative leave are Second District Commander Tatjana Savoy and Assistant Chief LaShay Makal. Savoy was specifically accused of reclassifying 390 thefts in a manner that could make crime appear to be declining, the Washington Examiner reported. The broader personnel actions are tied to investigations into alleged deliberate manipulation of crime data.

The turmoil inside MPD leadership has been building for months. In a related episode, the department's second-in-command was placed on leave over texts uncovered during the crime stats investigation, underscoring how deeply the probe has reached into the command structure.

A House report that lit the fuse

The suspensions did not materialize in a vacuum. A blistering House Oversight Committee report had already laid out the alleged mechanics of the scheme, pointing the finger squarely at former D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith. The committee found that Smith pressured her commanders to drive down publicly reported crime figures through misclassification of serious offenses.

"Chief Smith, police district commanders testified, was so preoccupied with the statistics of the select crimes that were made public that she incentivized her subordinates to lower those crimes by whatever means necessary."

Seven district commanders told congressional investigators that violent and property crimes were sometimes downgraded or reclassified. Assaults and burglaries, for instance, could be recategorized so they would not appear in daily public crime reports. One commander's testimony captured the internal pressure with blunt clarity, as the New York Post detailed.

"There is a direction to get away from the ADW because, again, the focus of this executive management has been on the crime numbers."

"ADW" refers to assault with a dangerous weapon, a serious violent felony. The implication: leadership wanted fewer of those on the books, regardless of what actually happened on the streets.

The House report cast doubt on the city's headline claims that violent crime fell by 35 percent and property crime by 11 percent. Those figures had been trumpeted by city officials as proof that D.C. was getting safer. The report landed shortly before Smith's announced resignation.

Trump called it months ago

The White House wasted no time connecting the suspensions to earlier warnings. President Trump had publicly accused D.C. of using "fake crime numbers" months before the 13 officers were removed. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson issued a statement reinforcing that point.

"President Trump was right, crime in Washington DC was a serious problem before he took bold action."

Congressional Republicans have echoed that framing, arguing that the investigation exposed a broader institutional effort to artificially lower reported crime. The alleged misconduct left thousands of cases improperly handled, according to critics cited by Fox News.

The political dimension is hard to miss. D.C. officials spent much of 2024 pointing to falling crime numbers as evidence that progressive policing strategies were working. If those numbers were fabricated, the policy arguments built on top of them collapse. Worse, residents and businesses made decisions about where to live, work, and invest based on data that may have been fiction.

Concerns about public safety in the nation's capital extend well beyond statistics. In a separate incident, Secret Service agents shot an armed man near the White House, triggering a lockdown and raising fresh questions about security in the District.

What investigators still need to determine

The Internal Affairs investigation has produced its initial findings, but several critical questions remain open. Investigators have not publicly confirmed how high the directive to manipulate data originated, or whether anyone outside MPD encouraged or facilitated the alleged scheme. The U.S. Attorney's Office referral suggests federal prosecutors saw enough to warrant a closer look, but no criminal charges against individual officers have been announced.

Authorities have not said whether the reclassification practices extended beyond the districts and commanders already identified. With 390 thefts allegedly reclassified in a single district alone, the total scope of manipulated data across the entire department could be far larger.

The intersection of federal law enforcement scrutiny and institutional accountability is a recurring theme in Washington. A separate controversy involving FBI subpoenas of phone records belonging to senior officials has also fueled conservative demands for transparency inside powerful justice and security agencies.

No public results have been released about whether the FBI's own analysis of the discrepant NIBRS data will factor into potential federal charges. The DOJ review referenced in the House Oversight report remains pending.

The cost of cooked books

Fake crime statistics are not a victimless bureaucratic sin. When a city tells its residents that violent crime dropped by 28 percent, people adjust their behavior. They walk home later. They move into neighborhoods they might have avoided. They pressure elected officials to fund priorities other than policing. If the drop was invented, every one of those decisions was made on a lie.

D.C. is not the only jurisdiction where questions about crime data integrity have surfaced, but the scale of the alleged discrepancy here is staggering. A claimed 28 percent decrease versus an actual 1.72 percent increase is not creative accounting. If the union's figures are accurate, it is fabrication.

The broader D.C. area has faced a string of public-safety incidents that have tested confidence in local institutions. A recent case involving a State Department employee accused of a violent stabbing in Virginia added to the sense that oversight and accountability across government agencies in the region need serious reinforcement.

For now, 13 officers sit on administrative leave. Some may never wear the badge again. The interim chief has signaled that the department intends to hold people accountable. The union wants more heads to roll. Congressional Republicans want answers about who knew what and when.

When the people tasked with reporting crime become the ones allegedly hiding it, the damage runs deeper than any single statistic. Trust, once shattered, does not get reclassified back into existence.