DC Quietly Settles Lawsuit With Officer Who Exposed Crime Stats Manipulation

Washington, D.C., settled out of court with a former Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) sergeant who alleged the department’s leadership deliberately under-counted crimes, and documents involved in the case appear to validate the former officer’s claims, The Washington Free Beacon reported Thursday.

Former Sergeant Charlotte Djossou sued the city in 2020 alleging the MPD deliberately downgraded felonies, such as theft and assault with a deadly weapon, to misdemeanors in order to exclude them from the city’s official crime statistics, while allegedly retaliating against her for speaking out, according to various records and documents obtained by the Free Beacon. The corporate media has insisted that D.C.’s crime problem is overblown, often citing the city’s crime data without skepticism and omitting that a top MPD officer is under investigation for allegedly manipulating crime stats.

Records show that leaders in the MPD specifically instructed officers to reclassify crimes so as to exclude them from public statistics, according to the Free Beacon.

For example, the MPD would classify shoplifting and theft offenses as “Taking Property Without Right,” which would not be counted in the city’s crime data, according to the Free Beacon. Former MPD lieutenant Andrew Zabavsky, who is currently serving a four-year sentence for covering up a murder, admitted in court that the reclassification was expressly done to obfuscate the incidents from publicly reported data.

As a result, crimes defined as “Taking Property Without Right” grew by 500% after the relevant classification directives were issued, according to the Free Beacon.