This article originally appeared here, at washingtonpost.com

The Justice Department is investigating whether Washington, D.C., police manipulated data to make crime rates appear lower, according to three people familiar with the probe.

The launch of the criminal probe — run out of the federal prosecutor’s office in D.C. — escalates the tense relationship between the Trump administration and local D.C. officials, who have repeatedly cited steep drops in violent crime to question the federal push to take over law enforcement in the nation’s capitol.

“D.C. gave Fake Crime numbers in order to create a false illusion of safety,” President Donald Trump wrote in confirming the existence of the probe on social media Monday night.

“This is a very bad and dangerous thing to do, and they are under serious investigation for so doing!” Trump continued. “Until 4 days ago, Washington, D.C., was the most unsafe ‘city’ in the United States, and perhaps the World. Now, in just a short period of time, it is perhaps the safest, and getting better every single hour!”

The Metropolitan Police Department put D.C. police commander Michael Pulliam on leave in Mayand began investigating him for allegedly making changes to crime data, NBC Washington reported last month.

The federal probe is expected to go beyond investigating Pulliam and examine actions of other local officials, according to the people familiar, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

The Metropolitan Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Justice Department declined to comment.

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and local officials have touted a drop in violent crime after a prolonged spike during and after the pandemic. According to local police data, violent crime is down 27 percent over this time last year, with homicides down 11 percent.

“We are not experiencing a spike in crime,” Bowser said on MSNBC this month. “In fact, we’re watching our crime numbers go down.”

But Trump and federal officials have said that D.C. crime is an at all-time high and the federal takeover of the police force is needed to make the city safer. D.C. Police Union Chairman Gregg Pemberton, who has publicly said he supports the federal takeover of the local police force, said he doubts that crime is as low as the mayor has touted.

“There’s a, potentially, a drop from where we were in 2023,” Pemberton said on NBC4. “I think that there’s a possibility that crime has come down. But the department is reporting that in 2024, crime went down 35% — violent crime — and another 25% through August of this year. That is preposterous. … We’re out on the street. We know the calls we’re responding to.”

The intense scrutiny of the Metropolitan Police Department comes as the police force is struggling to retain and recruit new officers. The police union has said it has hundreds of vacancies, forcing the city to pay huge amounts of money in overtime to the current 3,100 officers.