Michael Pulliam vs. Greg Pemberton, corruption accusations fly edition

Ever since Monday morning's presidential press conference, Democrats have criticized President Trump for taking over the DC PD, frequently accusing President Trump of being an authoritarian. Now that the Democrats' initial arguments are fading into oblivion, a new, more lethal, counterargument is emerging. The Washington Free Beacon's Alana Goodman has spearheaded the counterinsurgency with this article of DC police corruption.

Goodman wrote "After President Donald Trump announced a federal crackdown on lawlessness in Washington, D.C., mainstream media outlets and Democratic politicians claimed violent crime in the nation’s capital has 'fallen sharply' and has reached a '30-year low.' Their claims, though, rest on questionable police data that local leaders are accused of falsifying to play down the city's violent crime problem. The Metropolitan Police Department recently suspended a commander for allegedly manipulating that data, a fact the mainstream reports excluded."

That’s a diplomatic way of saying they think this commander helped cook Washington DC’s books. This article isn't as diplomatic:

A D.C. police commander is under investigation for allegedly altering crime statistics in his district, NBC 4 Washington reported. Commander Michael Pulliam, who led the 3rd District covering neighborhoods including Adams Morgan and Columbia Heights, was placed on paid administrative leave in mid-May. The leave came approximately one week after he filed an equal employment opportunity complaint against Executive Assistant Chief Andre Wright, according to multiple law enforcement sources.

Five sources familiar with the matter told News4 that Pulliam is being investigated for questionable changes to reported crime data. Pulliam has denied the allegations.

The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), which represents D.C. officers, has raised concerns about what it says is a broader practice of manipulating crime classifications to show declines in violent crime. FOP Chairman Gregg Pemberton said officers are frequently instructed by supervisors to downgrade serious felony reports to lesser offenses.

The union claims the practice is being directed by the MPD command staff in an effort to keep reported crime figures low.

In other words, Democrats knew that crime was a big issue and they knew that their policies had failed. The Democrats' only option at that point appears to have been to cook the books. Now that 'strategy' appears to be falling apart:

Politico reported Monday that "crime in Washington hit a 30-year low last year" despite the president "declaring a public safety emergency in the District" and attempting to "cast the city as dangerous." NPR’s story stated Trump ordered the federal intervention "despite the fact that violent crime plunged to a 30-year low last year, according to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice." The Guardian similarly claimed violent crime in D.C. "has fallen sharply since 2023" and reached a "30-year low on the day Trump took office" in January.

Notice the similarity with each of these publications. It's as if they'd been written by the same author. This inter view with Larry O'Connor is quite informative:

The DC PD appears to have corruption piled on top of corruption. Working that much mandatory overtime is outrageous. It needs to end. I suspect that's a major reason why President Trump took over.

What's most needed is politician reform. Without a tranaformation of the DC command staff, this crisis won't change. We can't have that in our nation's capitol.