Fiddling with DC crime statistics
The police chief of Washington DC recently resigned. She’s come under suspicion of falsifying crime data in DC – or rather, ordering her underlings to do it, in order to make the situation look better than it actually was.
Remember when many people on the left said it was an outrage that Trump sent the National Guard to the city to restore order? Well:
The House Oversight Republicans released a preliminary report accusing Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Chief Pamela A. Smith of manipulating crime data to make the city appear safer.
Smith resigned last week, citing “family, and also being more present with loved ones” after two years.
Sure thing.
More:
The Committee interviewed commanders:
“The Committee’s ongoing investigation has heard testimonies from commanders that there are clear pressures placed on MPD personnel to lower the classifications of crime to present to the public the perception of low crime in the District. Specifically, there was an emphasis on the daily crime report (DCR), a public-facing dataset that only includes nine categories of felony offenses, above all other crimes discussed within the highest levels of the MPD. Chief Smith, the commanders testified, was so preoccupied with the statistics of the select crimes that were made public that she incentivized her subordinates to lower those crimes by whatever means necessary.”
By whatever means necessary.
One of the results of all this was that many experienced police left, morale had become so low.
And yes, Smith was not only a DEI hire (second female head and first black female head) but a DEI administrator:
Smith joined the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPD) in May 2022 as the chief equity officer, assigned to the executive office of the chief of police. She led the department’s efforts on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). She developed an organizational channel for department-wide accountability by providing strategic advice to the MPD chief of police, executive leadership, and senior management officials within the department. In addition to her DEI focus, she supervised the directorates for employee well-being and support unit and equal employment opportunity office.
A side note of possible interest is that she is an ordained Baptist minister.
As far as I can see, Smith’s Wiki page says absolutely nothing about her manipulation of statistics – or even about accusations that she manipulated statistics.
So first a note on Baptist Polity (I.E. how baptists organize their churches). They are congregationalists, i.e. the congregation is the ultimate definer of what the church policy is. Membership in a denomination is optional. There are three main denominations I am familiar with, The Southern Bapitist Connvention (SBC), the American Bapitist Connvention (ABC) and Converge (Nee General Baptist Convention). The SBC no longer ordains women and hasn’t for over 40 years. The ABC is a liberal (very) set of churches and ordains women, However, it in general requires a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) and taking of several courses at one of it’s affiliated seminaries (E.G. Andover Newton, that has been merged into Yale Divinity). Converge is conservative but permits Egalitarian churches (i.e. the ordination of women and women preaching and teaching is valid). However, I believe Converge ALSO requires an M.Div. or similar for ordination. Last of all Baptist churches will often ordain locally, setting their own requirements. As Ms. Smith has neither B.A. in ministry nor an M. Div. or equivalent I expect this is her form of ordination. Some churches do ordain ministers of music as well as those to minister to the flock in other ways (pastoral care) so she is likely not a preaching/teaching elder. These ordinations are often only recognized within the ordaining church, and are often (though not always) not considered valid by the local state for weddings. Basically as far as I can tell she’s just plumping out her CV as liberals are wont to do.
It might be better to place the statistical collection agency in a different department of the government and to have a separate agency auditing the work of statistical collection agencies.
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Ah yes, melanin uber alles.
“Smith was not only a DEI hire…but a DEI administrator.”
The Left, far Left love, to use up people — they do so shamelessly.
I guess retiring means no accountability??
I wonder if she’ll even get a pension.
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Cooking the crime stats is really very common in leftist cities counties states.
Some places though, the cooking is at the next stage of “justice “.
In Austin and our county, Travis, the DA’s and prosecutors take care of reducing charges, even completely dismissing, and releasing even violent “suspects” on PR.
Again & again.
I’d never believe our official crime stats, of the last 2 maybe 2.5 decades.