I'll post the article in its entirety about sexual abuse by cops:
The color of lawlessness: Sexual abuse by police, nationwide
I was stopped by the police one night in January 2015 as I rode the New York City subway. I was making the long trip back downtown from Washington Heights at around 2 a.m. and had fallen asleep. Suddenly, I jolted awake to find an NYPD officer standing over me.
The officer asked me to step off the train. I asked him why. He insisted I do it.
I did as I was told and gave him some identification. We were at the 59th Street station, not far from the CBS News headquarters, where I had once worked as a broadcast journalist. Back then, officers would often smile and greet me as I walked into the building.
Nobody was smiling now.
I tried to keep the tremor out of my voice as I asked if I was being arrested. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” the officer mumbled as he scanned my ID.
The next few moments were tense. I thought of
Michael Brown,
Eric Garner, and
Tamir Rice, all of whom were killed by police while unarmed. All of whom were black, like me. I finally explained to the police officer that I hadn’t complied at first because I’d felt afraid. The officer looked me in the eye.
“You mean the police don't make you feel safe?” he sneered.
A longtime problem, now long known
In November, The Associated Press published a
story following a yearlong investigation that found that 1,000 officers across the country had lost their licenses over six years for sexual crimes, including rape, sodomy, possession of child pornography, and sexual misconduct.
The police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, is far from the only example of police abuse in the country. Abuse of women of color in particular is an under-reported story. (Johnny Silvercloud)
The AP also noted that the International Association of Chiefs of Police, or IACP, had highlighted the problem of police misconduct in
guidelines it published in 2011. Those guidelines, however, showed that law enforcement officials across the country had become alarmed about the rates of sex crimes within their ranks as early as 2007.
Why would such egregious misconduct among those tasked to protect and serve be overlooked for so long? The answer may have something to do with who is being victimized.
The IACP guidelines, whose publication was funded by the U.S. Department of Justice to help officers identify and prevent abuses, noted that victims of police misconduct are often among society’s most vulnerable. The guidelines list women as a majority of the victims most likely to be targeted. Minors, immigrants, the mentally ill or developmentally challenged persons, as well as individuals under the influence of drugs or alcohol were also included.
A 2006
report prepared for the United Nations Human Rights Committee by nongovernmental organizations in the United States found that racial profiling also takes gender-specific forms that often lead to sexual assault. The report noted that women of color, particularly African-American women and LGBT individuals, are routinely profiled on the streets and in their homes as sex workers, regardless of whether they are involved in the trade at all. The report also cited the routine rape and sexual abuse of Latina immigrants at border crossings.
A textbook example of law enforcement profiling victims for sexual assault is the case of Oklahoma City officer Daniel Holtzclaw.
Holtzclaw preyed on more than a dozen African-American women, most of whom lived in low-income neighborhoods. Many of them had had prior run-ins with the law, a point that was used to extort sexual favors from them. But Holtzclaw incorrectly profiled his last victim.
Jannie Ligons, a 57-year-old middle-class grandmother, had been only passing through a part of town where Holtzclaw stopped her. He demanded that she perform oral sex on him. “I was out there alone and helpless,” Ligons
said later. “I didn’t know what to do, and in my mind all I could think was that he was going to shoot me, that he was going to kill me.”
Ligons, unencumbered by a criminal history or the weight of shame that comes with poverty, went straight to the police after the assault. She wasn’t the first woman to accuse Holtzclaw of sexual assault, but she was the first to be believed. Sharday Hill, one of Holtzclaw’s other victims, testified at a pretrial hearing that her fears kept her from coming forward. “I didn't think that [any]one would believe me,” she said. “I feel like all police will work together”—aka protect their own.
In December, Benjamin Crump, the lawyer who represented five of 13 women accusing Holtzclaw of sexual assault, as well as the families of slain black teenagers Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, expressed dismay at media silence surrounding the Holtzclaw case when he
spoke at a press conference. “What is it about these 13 women that is so problematic or troubling?” he asked. “What is it—why are they unworthy of national media attention in such a sensational situation as a serial rapist with a badge raping a dozen of women? What is it about them? Aren’t they American citizens? Don’t they have civil rights? More importantly, don’t they have human rights?”
That same month, Holtzclaw was
convicted of rape, sexual battery, and other offenses and, in January, he was
sentenced to 263 years in prison.
But he is hardly the only police officer committing such crimes.
Silence among victims
Andrea Ritchie is a police misconduct lawyer and the co-founder of
Streetwise and Safe, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit organization that helps the youth in that community—many of whom are homeless or LGBT—protect themselves against police brutality and abuse. Harassment by police is something, Ritchie says, she has observed for decades, often through the window of her Brooklyn apartment. (She has since left the organization to focus on a fellowship.)
The color of lawlessness: Sexual abuse by police, nationwide - Women’s Media Center
“I live on the same block as three schools,” Ritchie told me. “I see police harassing young girls every day on their way to and from the subway. I regularly do ‘Know Your Rights’ workshops where stories start to flow, as well as the strategies women use to avoid or reduce the harm of such encounters.”
“Every time I speak somewhere, at least one woman comes up to me afterward and tells me a story she’s never told anyone else about police sexual violence,” Ritchie said.
One young woman affiliated with Streetwise and Safe, a single mother named Jasmine Epps, took to the blogosphere to tell her story. In an
article called “Injustice Diaries: A Young Black Woman’s Story,” Epps detailed how sexual assault and humiliation by police have always been a pervasive part of life in her neighborhood, from being frisked at the age of 8 to daily harassment now as she walks her daughter to school.
In one particularly infuriating scene, she writes, “The officer proceeded to grab my arm and ask me how old I was. When I replied 24, the officer looked slightly disappointed and said, ‘I would have taken you if you were younger.’ I was puzzled, embarrassed, and then outraged that someone would speak that way to me, especially in front of my children. I asked him where he would take me. He replied, ‘I have a few places.’”
In a
study published in 2014, Bowling Green State University in Ohio found that the victims of sex-related police abuse were typically under the age of 18. The study used the Google News search engine to analyze arrest cases of nearly 400 officers employed in 43 states and Washington, D.C. The
study also noted that the highest reports of police sexual misconduct occurred among officers who have zero to five years of experience.