The Trump Justice Department is investigating whether Washington, DC’s Metropolitan Police Department manipulated crime data, according to two sources.
The investigation, which is being run by the US attorney’s office in DC, is an escalation in the city’s battle against a federal law enforcement takeover from the Trump administration.
President Donald Trump appeared to confirm the probe in a social media post, writing that “D.C. gave Fake Crime numbers in order to create a false illusion of safety. This is a very bad and dangerous thing to do, and they are under serious investigation for so doing!”
The New York Times was first to report the investigation.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the investigation. CNN has reached out to Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Metropolitan Police Department for comment.
The investigation comes following reports that an MPD commander was placed on administrative leave amid accusations that the department was falsifying crime data in one district, marking offenses as lower-level crimes than they might actually be.
Trump and other administration officials have for months slammed the capital city, alleging that its Democratic leadership has allowed violent crime to run rampant for years. When federal police descended just over a week ago, the president said it was necessary to combat what he said was skyrocketing crime rates.
City officials have pushed back on the allegation, and the MPD’s public statistics say that violent crime has dropped almost 30% from this time last year. And in January the DOJ said that in 2024, violent crime dropped 35 % from the previous year, marking the lowest it had been in more than three decades.
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