Pols accuse sex crimes unit of ‘ignoring’ vics – chief fires back
NYPD BRASS clashed with City Council members Monday over an investigation that found the department has dropped the ball on investigating sexual assault cases.
Pols grilled police officials after the Department of Investigation found that the NYPD understaffed its sex crimes unit and failed to treat rapes by acquaintances as seriously as rapes by strangers.
“The Police Department has been knowingly neglecting victims of sexual assault,” said Councilman Donovan Richards, chairman of the public safety committee.
“Investigators are not properly trained, facilities are not suitable, and wait times are extensive. It is no wonder that victims don’t report more often. And it seems that NYPD leadership is just fine with victims of sex crimes being ignored,” the Queens Democrat added.
Police officials defended the performance of their Special Victims Division, and opposed four bills the Council is considering to regulate how they deal with sexual assault cases.
As of Monday, 20 new investigators were put on the job at Special Victims, bringing its headcount to 238 — up from 149 in 2010, said Chief of Department Terence Monahan.
Investigators typically handle eight to 10 active cases in a month — about half the caseload of precinct detective squads — and with the new staffers, the number is expected to drop to five to six.
Only 20% of cops applying to the division are accepted, and they get special training in how to interview traumatized survivors, he said.
“Would I like more detectives? I sure would,” said Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce, but added that many public safety needs compete for resources.
“Am I confident with the work my detectives are doing right now in special victims? I am. They’re doing amazing work,” he said. “These are the most highly trained detectives I have.”
But Richards said he wasn’t convinced — and was “taken aback” by the division’s use of less experienced investigators known as “white shields” who have not yet attained the rank of detective and aren’t allowed to work on the homicide squad.
“Unfortunately, I’m still hearing today that it’s not a priority,” he said of tackling sex crimes cases.
The NYPD said it’s misleading to call the investigators inexperienced, since they have an average of 6.6 years of experience when they join Special Victims.
The report also hit the department for directing Special Victims to handle only stranger rapes and high-profile cases, while date rapes are kept with precinct detective squads.
Officials said Monday that local precincts keep the cases only when an arrest is immediately made at the scene.
“I take umbrage to the fact that you believe that we don’t take this serious,” Monahan said. “This is something we take extremely serious.”
The hearing got heated as angry Council members spoke over NYPD officials, drawing a rebuke from Deputy Commissioner for Legal Matters Larry Byrne for the interruptions.
Byrne snapped at Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal when she questioned whether the CompStat system was the best way to track success on fighting sexual assault, calling the system the most sophisticated in the world.
“It’s clear that you need a lot of education on this topic,” he said.
The NYPD has launched a campaign to get victims to report their assaults, but Rosenthal (DManhattan) said it won’t work unless victims are confident their complaints will be handled properly.
“The NYPD has not made investigating sexual assault a priority,” she said.
In the first three months of this year, there were 382 rape complaints — and 130 of them were about rapes that happened before the beginning of the year, with 35 of them more than five years old, cops said.
The department opposed all four bills proposed by the Council to tighten regulations, which would require specific training in handling sex crimes, a new case management system and an “evidence-based” model for deciding staffing levels.
The mandates could leave survivors languishing, waiting for an investigator who had gone through a particular training session, they said, and would infringe on Police Commissioner James O’Neill’s authority to make decisions about staffing.
While cops hit many of DOI’s findings as baseless, they said they agreed with the criticism that its facilities are no good — often lacking spaces for private and comfortable interviews with victims.
On his weekly NY1 appearance Monday night, Mayor de Blasio reiterated that O’Neill had said last week the entire department would be reviewed.
“There’s going to be a new chief, there’s going to be a review of the operations of that whole division and whatever needs to be done to improve its work, strengthen its work, we’re committed to doing it,” de Blasio said.