Sadly, there are street harassers and sexual abusers among the members of the (mostly male) law enforcement in the U.S. and internationally (and of course, in the U.S. we also have racists and murderers among them too). This is a topic I touch on in my new book Stop Global Street Harassment: Growing Activism Around the World.
But I also want to highlight two recent news stories in the U.S. that exemplify this problem… and show why so many people hesitate to or refuse to go to law enforcement officers for help when they do face street harassment or other forms of sexual violence. We need a law enforcement #revolution before many of us will ever feel safe turning to them.
From the Washington Post:
“In a yearlong investigation of sexual misconduct by U.S. law enforcement, The Associated Press uncovered about 1,000 officers who lost their badges in a six-year period for rape, sodomy and other sexual assault; sex crimes that included possession of child pornography; or sexual misconduct such as propositioning citizens or having consensual but prohibited on-duty intercourse.
The number is unquestionably an undercount because it represents only those officers whose licenses to work in law enforcement were revoked, and not all states take such action. California and New York — with several of the nation’s largest law enforcement agencies — offered no records because they have no statewide system to decertify officers for misconduct. And even among states that provided records, some reported no officers removed for sexual misdeeds even though cases were identified via news stories or court records.
‘It’s happening probably in every law enforcement agency across the country,” said Chief Bernadette DiPino of the Sarasota Police Department in Florida, who helped study the problem for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. “It’s so underreported and people are scared that if they call and complain about a police officer, they think every other police officer is going to be then out to get them.’….
Even as cases around the country have sparked a national conversation about excessive force by police, sexual misconduct by officers has largely escaped widespread notice due to a patchwork of laws, piecemeal reporting and victims frequently reluctant to come forward because of their vulnerabilities — they often are young, poor, struggling with addiction or plagued by their own checkered pasts.
In interviews, lawyers and even police chiefs told the AP that some departments also stay quiet about improprieties to limit liability, allowing bad officers to quietly resign, keep their certification and sometimes jump to other jobs.
The officers involved in such wrongdoing represent a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands whose jobs are to serve and protect. But their actions have an outsized impact — miring departments in litigation that leads to costly settlements, crippling relationships with an already wary public and scarring victims with a special brand of fear.”
“For about six months, [Oklahoma City police officer Daniel] Holtzclaw preyed on women — all African-American — in one of Oklahoma’s poorest neighborhoods, exploiting his police badge to intimidate them into keeping quiet.
Prosecutors say the Oklahoma City officer selected his victims based on their criminal histories, figuring their drug or prostitution records would undermine any claims they might make against him.
Then, he would subject them to assaults that escalated from groping to oral sodomy and rape.
On Thursday, his 29th birthday, Holtzclaw rocked back and forth in his chair, sobbing, as the judge read the verdict [convicting him on 18 of 36 counts of rape and other sexual offenses against women he encountered on patrol. Jurors recommended a total of 263 years of prison time. He will be sentenced in January.]”
Read about the brave women who reported him, eventually leading to his conviction.
