Washington, D.C. has an extremely high crime rate, much higher than any state and a much worse murder rate than any of the twenty most populous cities, but there is considerable evidence that it is even much higher than the official data shows.
In 2020, Sergeant Charlotte Djossou, a former D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officer, sued the MPD, accusing it of manipulating crime statistics by misclassifying crimes and downgrading felonies to misdemeanors. This was done to help police get promotions and raises. For example, in one case she alleged an officer properly recorded a domestic violence incident with a deep cut as “assault with a dangerous weapon,” but a captain allegedly reclassified it as “sick person to the hospital.” Djossou also claimed the MPD reclassified theft and shoplifting as “taking property without right,” a category excluded from official crime reports.
In July 2025, similar charges were again raised against the MPD by the police union, where the union claimed the directive to change offense classifications comes from command staff. A D.C. police commander was placed on administrative leave while an investigation went forward. “Union officials said there is a larger trend of manipulating crime statistics.”
“When our members respond to the scene of a felony offense where there is a victim reporting that a felony occurred, inevitably there will be a lieutenant or a captain that will show up on that scene and direct those members to take a report for a lesser offense,” Fraternal Order of Police Chairman Gregg Pemberton said. “So, instead of taking a report for a shooting or a stabbing or a carjacking, they will order that officer to take a report for a theft or an injured person to the hospital or a felony assault, which is not the same type of classification.”
Of course there are other troubling stories. Anna Giaritelli writes of a homeless man violently attacking and sexually assaulting in broad daylight in Washington, D.C. five years ago: “He served time in federal prison for what he did to me. But if you look for evidence that the attack happened in the city’s crime statistics, you won’t find it. . . . But if the public wants to have an honest conversation about crime in D.C., the MPD will first have to be honest about how prevalent crime is.” Her story illustrates the general problems with law enforcement in D.C.. The man who attacked her was released until his trial, but “He was arrested in five separate incidents after being released, and after each arrest, the judge permitted his immediate release, even when he was caught in public with a machete.”
