True justice for NYC sexual violence victims
True justice for NYC sexual violence victims
By Lesley Brovner & Mark Peters
New York Daily News
Jul 12, 2022
Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation into the NYPD’s handling of sexual assault cases. This is a very big deal, and it’s quite possible the remedy should lead to additional federal oversight of one of the police department’s most important functions.
Here’s why:
The failure to properly investigate sexual assault runs broad and deep within the NYPD. In 2018, while in charge of the Department of Investigation (DOI), the city’s inspector general, we issued a report showcasing NYPD’s Special Victims Division’s (SVD) egregious failure to properly investigate sexual assault. The findings from our report were gravely disturbing. The department knowingly and egregiously understaffed SVD for many, many years. Further, the officers in SVD were woefully undertrained.