Even as the New York City Police Department is being investigated by the Feds for their abysmal treatment of rape victims, in the first quarter of 2022, the NYPD’s clearance rates for rape remained shockingly low.
49 percent of forcible rapes and 31 percent of “expanded rapes” were solved.
Let me back up: what’s the difference between forcible and expanded rape, you ask? Well! Unlike the Department of Justice, the NYPD defines rape as the forcible penetration of a vagina by a penis. In the past few years, they’ve included expanded rape as a statistical category for everything else.
So what kind of investigative protocol leads to these kinds of numbers? I get why solving a murder is hard. The victim can’t tell you who killed them and you need to find witnesses and they have to agree to talk with you. But with rape—you have to talk to one person and they come to you. What am I missing?
Let me back up again: Solve is too strong a word. As it turns out, when police departments deem a rape case cleared, it doesn’t mean they’ve made an arrest, but that they’ve closed the case because due to “exceptional circumstances” they can’t make an arrest.
One study found that nearly half of the departments surveyed cleared more rape cases under “exceptional” circumstances instead of with an arrest. The Baltimore PD, for example, declared a 70% clearance rate in 2016, but only made arrests in 30% of cases.
As ProPublica has reported, “exceptional” circumstances, where an arrest is not made despite sufficient evidence, can occur if the DA decides not to prosecute. A student at the University of Texas at Austin was attacked walking home; her assailant slammed her head into a wall and then raped her. She underwent a rape exam and reported his identity to police. The man told them the sex was consensual. When the rape kit failed to provide full-proof DNA evidence, the DA declined to prosecute. They worried about the CSI effect. It’s where due to the popular forensics show, juries expect DNA evidence to be 100% full-proof. The prosecutor worried a jury would be swayed by the attacker’s story because of a lack of conclusive DNA evidence from the kit—even though his story was that they had sex.
I poked around for police training manuals on how to handle rape cases. The first thing that came up from 2021 was not about solving rape cases, but closing rape cases.
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In this module, we provide information for law enforcement officers, investigators, and supervisors who make decisions regarding how to clear or otherwise close sexual assault cases. These determinations can be extremely difficult, yet many law enforcement personnel are provided little or no guidance in how to make them appropriately. At the end of this training module, the learner will be able to:
• Identify the various ways in which a sexual assault case can be cleared or otherwise closed.
• Explore how some cases are suspended or inactivated. • Discuss clearance methods defined by the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) program.
• Identify the criteria for clearance by arrest, exceptional clearance, and unfounding, according to the UCR. • Explain the difference between an unfounded and a false report
After giving cops the know-how on how to pump up their clearance statistics, the guide’s authors note why they might be tempted or pressured to do so.
There is too often pressure on officers, investigators, and supervisors to clear a high percentage of their cases, and this pressure is communicated through both informal modeling and more formal means such as performance evaluations. This pressure may be particularly pronounced in cases where the suspect is known, because investigators are not accustomed to leaving cases with identified suspects open. To close them, such cases are often unfounded improperly. Rather than shelving these cases by unfounding them, a better strategy is to suspend or inactivate them. Unfortunately, some police administrators believe that cases that are inactivated or suspended – rather than cleared – make it appear as if their agency has not done its job properly. This is not necessarily true, but the solution requires effective communication between law enforcement and victims, advocates, as well as the public.
Great.
To come back to the NYPD: the amazing thing here is that despite the monumental pressure to solve crimes by a Mayor who based 100% of his campaign on public safety, the NYPD can’t even be bothered to fake better rape clearance stats.
And, unlike in the Texas case, the NYPD need not worry that an arrest that doesn’t lead to a successful conviction is a waste of time. The NYPD arrests people for virtually everything, regardless of what prosecutors are likely to do with the case. They arrest people for filming them. They arrest people for asking them questions. They arrest people for sleeping on the train.
As we reported recently, they still arrest (Black and brown) people for having pot, even though pot is legal now. They arrested the fucking churro lady! (and strip searched her—who knows where she could be hiding an illicit churro?) Virtually none of the 100 or so people arrested for pot since it was legalized were prosecuted. Their cases were dismissed or ACD’d.
So why arrest people who won’t be prosecuted? It doesn’t seem like the best use of resources if you’re trying to fight violent crime. In fact—and hear me out—a better use of resources might be to arrest rapists so they don’t rape more people.
But the goal of arrests for things people think they can’t be arrested for? It’s to terrorize communities and downtrodden populations like the homeless, to create cosmetic changes that make real estate interests throw their cash at politicians like Adams.
Look, I don’t think that ACAB. But the system itself is another story.
"But with rape—you have to talk to one person and they come to you. What am I missing?"
1. Women lie. Especially in a society that incentivizes victimhood or a society they says they will "believe all women" (regardless of evidence.)
2. Shouldn't the police also have to talk to the accused? Shouldn't the police have at least 2 people to talk to?