In the smog-choked labyrinth of Washington, D.C.—that sacred urinal of American authority—another curtain of theater has been pulled back to reveal the grotesque stagehands behind the illusion of order. The Metropolitan Police Department, once again, has been caught falsifying crime statistics, padding their decline in violence with the same gleeful enthusiasm a televangelist reserves for fake healings. At the exact moment the White House wheezed out martial proclamations about taking over D.C.’s policing—citing lawlessness and “urban decay”—internal emails, whistleblowers, and forensic reports showed the police were cooking the books like greasy grifters on a last-ditch con. One precinct commander had allegedly instructed officers to downgrade felonies into misdemeanors, and shootings into paperwork errors, feeding the public a numerical lullaby while the city’s wounds festered unacknowledged.