D.C. Police Chief Immediately Resigns | JP
The city of Washington D.C. will be looking for a new police chief.
In a sudden announcement, Washington D.C.’s police chief has announced she is resigning.
The police chief’s resignation comes just weeks after two National Guard members were shot just blocks away from the White House last month.
Fox News reported more on the police chief’s sudden resignation:
Washington, D.C., police chief Pamela Smith is resigning her position after just two and a half years on the job, she announced Monday.
Smith has faced intense pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration, which took over the Metropolitan Police Department earlier this year and deployed federal law enforcement throughout the city.
“There comes a time when you just know it’s time,” Smith told Axios, which first reported her resignation.
“I am deeply humbled, grateful, and deeply appreciative of my time with the District of Columbia. Serving as Chief of Police has been the greatest honor of my career, and I want to extend my sincere thanks to Mayor Muriel Bowser for appointing me to this position and to the DC Council for their steadfast support throughout my tenure,” she said in a statement.
Bowser praised Smith’s work as police chief in her own statement on Monday, saying she weathered “attacks on our city’s autonomy.”
Smith has faced criticism from some D.C. residents who claim she has allowed MPD officers to assist federal agents in immigration enforcement, a claim she denies.
“We are not aligned with ICE. We do not, and have not since the crime emergency, worked alongside ICE,” Smith told Axios. “[Social media] videos lend one aspect of what you see. If they show up, they show up. They’re federal officers.”
Here was the D.C. mayor’s response to the sudden resignation:
Today, I announced that Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela A. Smith will be stepping down.
My statement: pic.twitter.com/fg1iEaBmOz— Mayor Muriel Bowser (@MayorBowser) December 8, 2025
Smith previously went viral after not knowing what “chain of command” meant:
“Do you know what the chain of command is now?”
“What does that mean?”
DEI D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith resigns after pressure mounts from probes launched into allegations of manipulated crime statistics.
As we knew all along, they were lying. pic.twitter.com/TYRgsd7EwD
— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) December 8, 2025
The Guardian reported the resignation will take effect on December 31st:
Smith will reportedly resign on 31 December, according to Axios. The mayor’s statement did not provide a timeline for naming a successor, or indicate whether the leadership change might affect Washington’s broader public safety strategy.
In August, Trump declared a public safety emergency in an executive order and placed the MPD under federal control for 30 days, deploying more than 2,000 national guard troops to the capital. The federalization expired in September, though national guard troops remain deployed through February 2026, and the president threatened to reimpose control if the city does not cooperate with immigration enforcement operations.
Smith’s tenure began during one of Washington’s most violent periods in nearly two decades. In 2023, the city recorded 274 homicides – the highest number since 1997 – while carjackings hit 959, a record. The spike prompted congressional hearings and led city officials to expand police powers, including authorizing drug-free zones in high-crime areas and rewriting portions of the criminal code.
By early 2024, the city began seeing improvements. Overall crime dropped approximately 17% in the first 10 weeks of the year, a decline Smith attributed to new legislation and targeted deployments. The justice department reported in January 2025 that violent crime in DC had fallen 35% from 2023, reaching its lowest level in over 30 years.
However, the justice department and House Republicans are investigating allegations from a whistleblower that MPD supervisors manipulated crime statistics. One police commander was placed on leave in May amid the investigation, and Smith told Axios she “would never say to anyone to alter stats” but declined to say whether other personnel were on leave in connection with the inquiry.