D.C. mayor expresses plans to cooperate with DOJ crime stats probe

City officials planned to fully comply with any federal investigations, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said Wednesday. Her comments came after the Department of Justice launched an investigation into the possibility that the city’s crime statistics were manipulated.

Why do feds think stats were manipulated? President Donald Trump described the city’s crime numbers as fake in a Monday morning statement. He previously cited high crime rates in 2023 to justify deploying a swath of federal agencies to police the city last week. But despite what others may say, crime has gone down precipitously in the last two years thanks to changes in public safety policies, Bowser said. She added that the federal agencies had not taken over the city’s policing and instead described the rise in agents simply as a federal surge.

D.C. police Chief Pamela A. Smith launched an investigation into possible data manipulation by an employee in May. Smith could not share any new details on the investigation because it’s still ongoing, she said at Bowser’s Wednesday press conference.

Dig deeper: Read Carolina Lumetta’s report for more about Trump’s initiatives to quell crime in the city.