WASHINGTON — A Republican-led House Oversight Committee interim report released Sunday accuses former Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela A. Smith of pressuring commanders to lower crime classifications and fostering a “culture of fear” in an effort to reduce the crimes reflected in the city’s public-facing statistics.
The 22-page report, prepared by the committee’s majority staff and dated December 14, 2025, stems from an investigation launched on August 25 after reports that MPD officials were manipulating crime data. Investigators conducted eight transcribed interviews in October and November with seven acting district commanders and one suspended commander, then anonymized the sources “to protect” them from potential retaliation, the report says.
The report was released days after Smith announced her resignation. In public remark, Smith said she was stepping down to prioritize family and described leading MPD as the “greatest honor” of her career.
At the center of the committee’s allegations is MPD’s Daily Crime Report, a public dataset the report says includes only nine felony categories. Commanders told investigators that leadership focused intensely on those categories and that personnel were pressured, and at times instructed, to reclassify incidents into “intermediate” offenses that do not appear in that daily public tally.
The report describes a review-and-approval process in which commanders said Smith and senior staff sought to weigh in on classifications before crimes were entered into MPD’s records system, consuming time that could otherwise be used for policing and investigations.
In one example cited in the report, a commander recounted being directed to reduce an “assault with a dangerous weapon” classification to an “endangerment with a firearm” offense — a change the report says would move the incident out of the categories highlighted in the daily public report. Another excerpt notes that if some felony assaults are shifted into different categories, specific reported metrics can appear to fall even when underlying violence has not.
Beyond data concerns, the interim report paints a harsh picture of department leadership under Smith, describing repeated public beratings during mandatory crime briefings and a climate in which commanders felt their jobs could be at risk if “the numbers go up.” In one exchange quoted in the report, a commander answered “Yes” when asked whether that fear “seeps into the meetings.”
