❓WHAT HAPPENED: A veteran Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officer alleged that D.C. law enforcement misclassified apparent murders to deflate the district’s homicide numbers.

👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: MPD Sergeant Carlos Bundy, other whistleblowers, and D.C. police leaders.

📍WHEN & WHERE: Allegations span Bundy’s tenure in the MPD homicide unit (2010-2018) and beyond, with lawsuits ongoing in Washington, D.C.

💬KEY QUOTE: Sergeant Carlos Bundy, who served in the MPD’s homicide unit from 2010 to 2018, claims management “mis-categorized deaths as something other than a homicide in order to keep the District’s homicide numbers down.”

🎯IMPACT: The allegations raise further questions about the accuracy of D.C.’s crime statistics and the true state of public safety.

The Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) is being sued by a veteran of its homicide unit who alleges the capital city’s law enforcement leaders manipulated crime data by misclassifying murders as accidental deaths and suicides. Sergeant Carlos Bundy, who served in the MPD’s homicide unit from 2010 to 2018, claims management “mis-categorized deaths as something other than a homicide in order to keep the District’s homicide numbers down.”

Bundy further accuses senior MPD officials of retaliating against him after he brought these concerns to his superiors, denying him days off and lowering his evaluation scores.

Bundy’s allegations align with similar claims from other MPD officers who have stated that department leaders downgraded theft and aggravated assault cases to lesser offenses to manipulate crime rate statistics. In another case, former MPD Sergeant Charlotte Djossou settled a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit after accusing leadership of “distorting crime statistics” by reclassifying felonies as misdemeanors. The lawsuits lend credibility to President Donald J. Trump’s assertion that D.C. officials have used “Fake Crime numbers in order to create a false illusion of safety.”

The National Pulse reported on Wednesday that Gregg Pemberton, Chairman of the D.C. Police Union, accused top officials within the MPD of deliberately manipulating crime data in Washington, D.C. According to Pemberton, officers are often directed at crime scenes to either understate the severity of incidents or not document them at all, “They respond to the scenes of these violent crimes and, inevitably, you’ll have a captain, or a commander show up on the scene and advise them to take a report for a lesser offense.”

In addition, U.S. Attorney Jeanne Pirro and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have initiated an investigation into the falsification of crime data. One MPD commander, Michael Pulliam, is already facing charges.

Sergeant Bundy’s lawsuit highlights specific instances where deaths were allegedly misclassified. For example, a November 2019 case involved a man struck in the head with a brick, which was ruled an accident despite an autopsy identifying it as a homicide. In another case from October 2020, a man beaten to death was classified as “undetermined” despite blunt force injuries confirmed in the autopsy. Bundy also cited a 2021 shooting where a homicide was captured on video but was not investigated, being labeled justifiable without an objective review.

Bundy further alleged that, in January 2021, a woman’s death showing evidence of strangulation was initially classified as “unknown cause” to avoid adding another homicide to open cases. An autopsy later confirmed it as a homicide, but Bundy argues that critical evidence was lost during the delay, leaving a murderer at large.

Image by Leodavidson.

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