Why DC's Police Commissioner Just Resigned

Matt Vespa | December 09, 2025 12:30 PM

She wanted to go. It wasn’t worth it. Also, DC police is mired in controversy over lax public safety standards and the fudging of crime data. The federal government took over the department when President Trump deployed the National Guard to re-establish law and order in the capital. Liberals accused DC police of working with immigration enforcement agents. Smith denied it, though Mayor Muriel Bowser did release a statement this Fall that DC would work with federal law enforcement agencies indefinitely to make the city safer. She even credited Trump with making the city safety by deploying the National Guard.

In her remarks about resigning from the DC police, Smith said she knew it was time. Translation: let me leave this post before the s**tshow begins (via Fox News):

Washington, D.C., police chief Pamela Smith is resigning her position after just two and a half years on the job, she announced Monday.
Smith has faced intense pressure from President Donald Trump's administration, which took over the Metropolitan Police Department earlier this year and deployed federal law enforcement throughout the city.
"There comes a time when you just know it's time," Smith told Axios, which first reported her resignation.
[…]
Smith has faced criticism from some D.C. residents who claim she has allowed MPD officers to assist federal agents in immigration enforcement, a claim she denies.
"We are not aligned with ICE. We do not, and have not since the crime emergency, worked alongside ICE," Smith told Axios. "[Social media] videos lend one aspect of what you see. If they show up, they show up. They're federal officers."
Smith has also faced controversy within her own department, with many rank-and-file officers accusing higher-ups of reclassifying crimes to make the city's crime data appear more benign.
As of October, roughly three dozen rank-and-file officers and detectives had lodged complaints with the Justice Department, as the city faces an investigation into whether crime statistics were intentionally misreported under the Trump administration.