Police brass repeatedly told officers to downgrade theft cases, knife attacks, and violent assaults to lesser offenses, according to internal MPD emails, depositions, and phone call transcripts the Free Beacon reviewed.
Djossou, who joined the force after serving honorably in Iraq, accused MPD brass of attempting to “distort crime statistics” by “downgrading a number of felonies to misdemeanors, so that there will be ‘fewer’ felonies in the statistics.” She also provided records showing that police leaders explicitly instructed their subordinates to underclassify certain instances of theft to keep them out of the crime stats the city reports to the public.
