Washington’s interim police chief said Tuesday that 13 officers were placed on administrative leave as part of an internal investigation into how the department keeps crime statistics, a matter that has also drawn scrutiny from Congress and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Interim Police Chief Jeffery Carroll said at a press conference that the officers were put on leave Monday, after what he described as an investigation that began earlier this year. He said the probe began following a referral from the U.S. Attorney’s Office and that he declined repeatedly to provide details about the specific allegations or the investigation’s findings.
Carroll said the officers were not fired, and he described the department’s internal administrative rights process. He said the MPD’s “adverse action panel” would review evidence and determine whether any discipline is necessary, adding that the administrative process “must be allowed to take its course.”
Carroll also said the department’s internal investigation would not be released publicly. He said assessments and training were under way for officers on how to submit data, and he said he had confidence in the department’s crime statistics, describing them as tools used daily for deployment across the city.
The announcement comes amid an extended dispute over the accuracy of Washington’s crime data and how it is used to measure public safety progress. The AP report says President Donald Trump issued a monthlong emergency order last summer that federalized the police force and launched a federal law enforcement operation in Washington intended to fight crime, and Trump repeatedly touted drops in crime during and after the surge.
In contrast, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser and other city officials have said crime was already trending downward. Republicans and the administration then raised questions about whether the data had been manipulated, the AP said, which limited the political benefit of the surge.
The scrutiny included separate investigations by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Justice Department. The AP report said a report released in December by the House Committee found then-police Chief Pamela Smith often threatened, punished and retaliated against police commanders who presented her with “spikes in crime,” according to the Republican-led committee. The report said Smith pressured subordinates to manipulate department data to artificially lower city crime rates.
A separate investigation by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office also found that a significant number of MPD reports had been misclassified to make crime rates appear lower than they are, the AP report said. The AP said neither congressional investigators nor the U.S. Attorney’s office found grounds to charge anyone with a crime, and it reported Pirro had said at the time that it was up to MPD to address “these underlying issues.”
Carroll, who took over as interim chief in December, said Tuesday that the department had been successful in reducing crime over the last three years, including in homicides, shootings and carjackings. He said the administrative leave decision reflects the department’s internal review as it proceeds through its stated processes, rather than a conclusion that any disciplinary outcome has been finalized.
Bowser, according to the AP report, also called for an independent investigation by the city’s inspector general, a probe that the report said began in January.