WASHINGTON—A Congressional committee has accused the chief of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) of pressuring her staff to downgrade the classification of crime in Washington.
The Dec. 14 interim report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform alleges that Pamela Smith, who is set to leave her post at the end of the month, manipulated public-facing crime statistics, “placing a higher priority on suppressing public reporting of crime statistics than stopping crime itself.”
