People familiar with the crime statistics in Washington immediately challenged President Donald Trump’s assertion that crime in the capital was “out of control” and thus warranted him sending in the National Guard. So the president responded on social media 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!” Sure enough, Trump’s Department of Justice is now investigating whether the district’s Metropolitan Police Department manipulated crime data to make rates appear lower than reality.
It is unlikely that manipulation explains the district’s reported drop in crime. Because violent crime is down in big cities across the country.
It is true that a police commander, Michael Pulliam, was placed on paid administrative leave in May after allegations that he wrongly altered crime statistics in his district, and it’s true that the police union there has claimed that supervisors regularly direct arresting officers to “take a report for a lesser offense” instead of felonies. Trump-aligned legal groups have filed FOIA requests citing alleged manipulation and a settlement with a former police sergeant who sued over “misclassifying offenses.” But it is highly unlikely that manipulation explains the district’s reported drop in crime. Because violent crime is down in big cities across the country.
And it’s absolutely absurd for Trump to hold up 2023 statistics and say as he did at an Aug. 11 news conference that Washington’s murder rate is higher than “we can find anywhere in the world.” In 2023, Washington’s murder rate wasn’t even the highest in the United States, as reports show that at least six U.S. cities were worse.
When leaders make unfounded claims about data manipulation, the entire statistical infrastructure on which democracy depends is destroyed, and democracy experts characterize Trump’s use of false crime claims as following “the authoritarian playbook,” where “autocrats and demagogues use false claims of crime and disorder as pretexts to declare a permanent state of emergency and to suspend the rule of law.” Congressional Democrats warned of “a soft launch of authoritarianism” after Trump’s announcement, and NPR pointed out that civil rights leaders have warned that Trump’s actions in D.C. are “another beta test for nationwide authoritarian control” and “a testing ground for what they might attempt in any other jurisdiction.”
I’ve been in law enforcement more than four decades and served in leadership roles at the local, state and federal levels. Contrary to the president’s claims of manipulation, the evidence supporting the reliability of current crime reporting systems is — well, the only word for it is overwhelming.
The United States has two major crime measurement systems: the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and — the gold standard — the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. The UCR employs multiple validation layers through its Crime and Law Enforcement Statistics Unit, which “initially review[s] the data to determine adherence to UCR policy, conformance to UCR definitions and principles, and consistency with established statistical methodologies.” Before entering the national database, staff “use specialized edit functions to ensure that the data meet the established standards,” and, when errors are found or suspected, they obtain verification from submitting agencies.
Expert analysis by the highly regarded nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice notes that “attempts to cast doubt on the reliability of the numbers don’t hold up” and that the FBI’s annual report “is the most complete estimate of national statistics available.” The 2023 report, for instance, incorporated data from more than 16,000 local police agencies covering some 94% of the population.
Independent verification is vital to assuring accuracy. Thus, the UCR and the NCVS serve as a check and balance against each other. According to the Council on Criminal Justice, “both sources present similar long-term crime trends” and “much of the difference between the two sources stems from variations in methodology, rather than inaccuracies in the data.”
As if all this were not sufficient reason to trust FBI and NCVS statistics, the FBI conducts quality assurance reviews to “identify strengths and weaknesses in an agency’s reporting methods, thereby helping the agency to improve the accuracy of its crime data” and “assess the validity of an agency’s crime statistics.”
Who profits from Trump’s latest big lie? Those who are invested in undermining the home-rule government of the majority-Black and majority-Democrat District of Columbia.
But what about the District of Columbia specifically? Violence has been falling after a 2023 spike. Homicides fell 32% in 2024 and another 12% in 2025, while carjackings dropped 37% in 2025 despite Trump’s claims that they “tripled.” The DOJ itself reported in January 2025 that “violent crime for 2024 in the District of Columbia is down 35% from 2023 and is the lowest it has been in over 30 years.”
There’s no way to manipulate crime statistics down to that level.
Who profits from Trump’s latest big lie? The answer is obvious: those who are invested in undermining trust in the conduct of law enforcement, the rule of law and the home-rule government of the majority-Black and majority-Democrat District of Columbia.
The Trump administration is reaping a bumper crop of manipulation and lies sprouted from seeds that have been sown for years. Experts warn that “the decades-long effort in the conservative movement to undermine trust in key institutions” creates dangerous vulnerabilities, as “people must believe the health advice that they are getting from the CDC and other government agencies” and “receive (and trust) accurate information from major news organizations.”
Democracy can survive only on a solid foundation of the rule of law, which requires community trust and community buy-in. In D.C. today, local residents, particularly young people, report feeling “unsafe” due to the federal takeover, with college students saying “we’re afraid to go out because we’re afraid, one wrong step, one wrong move, off the crosswalk and I’m getting flagged down for something.”
The greatest monument to American democracy is not the Statue of Liberty or the Washington Monument or the U.S. Capitol and certainly not the White House. It is the legions of nonpartisan professional civil servants whose expert statistical and analytical stewardship accurately conveys the true state of the union from one day to the next. Their work is a thermometer of our national health. The instrument is not rigged or compromised, but it is fragile and demands our faithful and vigilant protection.