The Left repeatedly used local police statistics to suggest President Donald Trump was overreacting to crime in Washington, D.C. — but a watchdog agency’s report casts further doubt on the data.D.C.’s Office of the Inspector General exposed a “prolonged, systemic breakdown” in how the Metropolitan Police Department documented crime in a Tuesday report first revealed by ABC7. MPD employees told the inspector general’s office about how “supervisory personnel influenced crime classifications to align with anticipated or desired crime trends,” among other investigative findings, the report said.Trump triggered debate about how dire public safety really is in the nation’s capital after launching a wide-ranging policing surge in August 2025. Democratic lawmakers, liberal media outlets, and Democratic D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser often cited MPD data to claim Trump exaggerated crime rates, despite the fact that the MPD was already investigating allegations that personnel were falsifying the numbers. The D.C. inspector general’s report now affirms conservatives’ suspicions, describing how the MPD’s crime reporting processes since 2015 were unclear, opaque, lacked oversight, and controlled by certain higher-ups with their own agendas.