OPINION:
Washington, D.C. has a crime problem — and the data meant to track it has been manipulated to hide the truth.
Anna Giaritelli, reporter and author of “Under Assault: A Crime Reporter’s True Story Overcoming Of Sexual Trauma and Exposing Injustice,” joins Washington Times Commentary Editor Kelly Sadler to share her own experience as a sexual assault victim whose crime was excluded from official D.C. police statistics and what she’s doing to fight back.
[SADLER] Recently, 13 officers of the D.C. police unit were put on administrative leave because they were found to be manipulating the crime data to make it look like crime in Washington, D.C. wasn’t as prevalent as it really is. And these were stats that the mainstream media glommed onto when President Trump decided to send in the National Guard to straighten out Washington, D.C.
You had fact-checkers, you had everyone running to the D.C. police, saying crime isn’t a big deal, is it? And they were like, no, it’s not. Look at the statistics. They’re all down. And the president accused the police of manipulating the data. And that was found to be true.
But Anna, you’ve got a personal connection to this story. You went through it yourself. Can you tell our viewers exactly of your experience?
[GIARITELLI] The crime cover-up by D.C. police goes bigger than this incident. My crime as a sexual assault survivor was excluded from the crime stats on a different condition. I was attacked in the street randomly in 2020, not far from the U.S. Capitol, by just a deranged man who got away that day, and he was later arrested thanks to DNA from the assault. And he was already a criminal, had a criminal record, and he was put before a judge and released the following day.
It took about two years before we ended up going to trial and he was sentenced. And in that time, he was arrested five more times and then released by the judge the following day.
And so I lost faith in the D.C. police and the judicial system that they were going to actually look out for me as a victim. This attack happened right outside — a block from my front door. And so I left D.C. And he went to prison. He was convicted for sexual abuse in the third degree.
And when I went to look for my crime stat on the D.C. police stats page, I couldn’t find it, and found out after reaching out to police that they do not include crimes — felonies that were not first degree — as of 2020. And when I asked them last year where that stood, they said they’re no longer including stats that were not sexual abuse cases that were not first degree and some second degree. And so it opened my eyes as a federal law enforcement reporter to — the stats were being covered up in a whole separate way, like I said, than this other way that they had been covered up by these 13 other high-ranking officers.
[SADLER] What astounds me is that you got sexually assaulted right outside your home by a deranged lunatic. The police had him in custody. He went before a judge, and the judge released him back into the city. On what grounds? And why was that? Why wasn’t he just put away almost immediately, or just put away until, you know, the trial date happened and he was found either innocent or guilty?
[GIARITELLI] It was because the jail was too full.
And so that was the grounds. The U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecuted my case because in D.C., we don’t have district attorneys. All felonies get prosecuted by DOJ, which is a huge deal. And that was what they told me. The jail was full. There’s nowhere to put him. So we put him back on the streets. And I don’t have a say in that. It’s not under my control to say — after, you can’t let that happen. I mean, I did, but they shrugged their shoulders and said, well, you know, this is how it is.
And what I didn’t know, Kelly, was that prior to assaulting me — and I was rescued. This all didn’t stop. It was because people actually heard me screaming on the sidewalk and ran over and got him off me. He ran away. He had assaulted another woman in the same area, a woman who was an off-duty police officer, and she had survived as well. And I didn’t find that out until sentencing.
And so after this, he gets arrested five more times, including for violating a restraining order, coming back to the site of the crime outside my apartment, exposing his genitals to a staff member at the Supreme Court a few blocks away. He was caught outside with a machete, on and on. And in those cases, none of them are included in the crime stats. And all of these were preventable. None of this needed to continue to happen.
[SADLER] Well, you said you had to move out of the area. I can only imagine going through an experience like you did and knowing your assailant is back out on the streets and having to live in the city in constant fear. Emotionally, that’d be very difficult to deal with.
[GIARITELLI] It was. You know, it was several weeks into COVID when this happened in D.C. The lockdowns were brutal. I live by myself, six floors up, and just didn’t see anybody. And the only chance I had to leave — couldn’t go to church, couldn’t go to work, couldn’t go out to restaurants — was to go on a walk every day. And that solitude made it so much more difficult.
But ultimately, I said I have to move. So I moved across town to a different area, but was unable to shake just the fear of — you know, I don’t remember his face. So every time I go out, I’m looking at, unfortunately, every black man in sweatpants, and scared that — is that him? Is he going to attack me again? Does he remember me? And dealing with, you know, severe PTSD, a lot of anxiety, constant panic attacks.
Watch the video for the full conversation.
Read more:
- ‘Culture of fear’ helped influence D.C. police leaders to fudge crime numbers, internal report says
- D.C. police suspend 13 officers implicated in scheme to fix crime numbers
- Three D.C. police higher-ups set to be fired over crime data manipulation
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