After I was sexually assaulted in the street in broad daylight in Washington D.C., I assumed it would be reflected in the DC Police Department’s crime data — part of the official record used to understand public safety. It wasn't.  A man went to federal prison for how badly he hurt me, yet Democrats who control DC decided I and countless other victims of crime weren’t hurt badly enough to count in crime stats. 

I'm calling on leaders in America's largest blue cities to report crime data honestly and transparently — without political spin.

My name is Anna. I am an award-winning reporter who has covered crime and public safety in the nation's capital for nearly a decade.

My own experience raised a serious question: how many incidents never make it into the statistics at all? I had no idea how crime was being kept out of crime stats until I went to look for my own crime stat and investigated how police intentionally hid it from public record.

When a reported crime doesn't show up in the data, it's not just a clerical issue. It points to a larger problem. Across several major cities under Democratic leadership, reporting practices — from reclassification to delays to omitting — can shape how crime is presented to the public. And when those numbers are challenged, especially in national political debates, the focus often shifts to defending the data instead of examining its accuracy.

The consequences of this can be severe: the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department fired 13 staffers after an investigation found they had manipulated crime statistics to make our city appear safer than it was. My stat was exempted because it wasn’t a 1st degree offense and it remains uncounted along with likely thousands of other victims in DC every year. Real people who have had their lives upended. Ordinary people like me.

I’m an independent voter and strive to be an objective reporter. This isn't about scoring political points. It's about whether the public is getting a clear and complete picture of how safe our streets are.  Victims deserve to have their experiences counted and their voices reflected in the official record — not erased by the way data is collected or reported. 

Crime data informs policy, funding, and how communities understand their own safety. Policymakers cannot determine the most effective approaches to public safety when the information they're working from is incomplete or distorted. When that data is incomplete or inconsistent, it undermines trust and leaves real experiences unaccounted for. It tells victims like myself, “You don’t matter. Your pain is meaningless.” It makes recovery that much more difficult. To be assaulted once is bad enough, but to have the department tasked with helping crime victims do this to us is to be assaulted twice.

Accurate crime data shouldn't depend on politics. If we don't demand transparency and consistent standards, more incidents will go uncounted — and the gap between official reports and lived reality will keep growing. Public safety starts with the truth. We want integrity in our crime stats and full justice for all victims.