In battle over DC police, federal prosecutors open inquiry into crime data

Homeland Security Investigations officers conduct a traffic stop near the White House in Washington on Wednesday night, Aug. 13, 2025. Prosecutors working for the U.S. attorney, Jeanine Pirro, have opened an investigation into whether District of Columbia police officials falsified crime data. (Eric Lee/The New York Times)

By Devlin Barrett

The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington is investigating whether city police officials falsified crime data, according to two people familiar with the matter — another salvo in the feud between federal and local authorities after the Trump administration seized control of law enforcement in the nation’s capital.

The investigation is likely to prompt new criticism that the administration is using the levers of the criminal justice system to pursue the president’s political opponents. In justifying his takeover of the city’s police force, President Donald Trump has claimed crime in Washington is worse than the statistics show.

He revisited the claim Monday when he disclosed in a social media post that an investigation had been opened into the issue.

“D.C. gave Fake Crime numbers in order to create a false illusion of safety,” Trump wrote. “This is a very bad and dangerous thing to do, and they are under serious investigation for so doing!”

How tabulating crime data from the local police could amount to a federal crime is not immediately clear, the two people said, though the effort aims to determine if there were false statements or fraud involved in producing the data.

Prosecutors working for U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro opened the investigation in recent days, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing inquiry.

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment. A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In wresting control of the police force, Trump and his allies have challenged the accuracy of the District of Columbia’s crime statistics. They have pointed to a police official in the city’s 3rd District who was suspended this year in the middle of an internal inquiry into whether he downplayed the seriousness of some crimes. The head of the local police union has also claimed, amid a litany of complaints about the department’s senior leadership, that crimes have been deliberately undercounted.

Mayor Muriel Bowser has said the matter involved data anomalies in one of the city’s seven districts. “We are completing that investigation, and we don’t believe it implicates many cases,” she told NBC4 Washington in recent days.

Since Aug. 11, Trump has declared an emergency in Washington, taken authority over the Police Department for 30 days, and sent hundreds of National Guard troops and additional federal agents onto the streets to conduct patrols and stop cars, giving them a high-profile presence in daily life.

City officials have challenged the rationale for such an aggressive assertion of power, noting that most major categories of crime have been falling since 2023. Homicides, for instance, have dropped 11% this year compared with the same period last year.

In April, the same U.S. attorney’s office that is investigating the city’s crime data heralded its figures, praising a 25% drop in violent crime in Washington in the first 100 days of Trump’s administration.

Last week, however, the president declared that crime in the capital was out of control and that his Justice Department would take over law enforcement work in the city.

The standoff between federal and local authorities deepened after the city’s attorney general sued the administration Friday over its efforts to tighten its grip on law enforcement. A day earlier, the Justice Department declared it would curb the police chief’s authority and demanded that local officers aid in immigration enforcement.

The two sides reached a tentative truce Friday, in which Police Chief Pamela A. Smith retains authority over the Police Department but her officers may be more helpful to immigration enforcement efforts. A federal judge may hold a hearing on the issue this week.

Federal prosecutors are not the only ones trying to find evidence of a cover-up on crime figures in Washington.

Last week, a group founded by Trump adviser Stephen Miller, America First Legal, said it was seeking police and city documents about possible problems with crime data.