DOJ vs. SVD

If irony were a crime, the U.S. Department of Justice would be locked up for years for launching an investigation of the NYPD’s Special Victims Division. After all, 90 women abused by former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar are suing the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the DOJ’s law enforcers, for what FBI Director Christopher Wray admits was “gross misconduct.” After the bureau received reports of Nassar’s crimes in 2015, it failed to even open an investigation, and Nassar went on to prey on dozens of young women.

But irony is not a crime, and there’s powerful evidence that many New Yorkers with credible reports of rape or other sex crimes have over many years been failed by the city police department division responsible for investigating violations and arresting suspected perpetrators. SVD was and still is staffed with many well-meaning, hardworking professionals who want nothing more than to serve victims and catch the bad guys, but its techniques warrant deeper scrutiny — which is why it’s good news the Adams administration and Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell have pledged to cooperate with the probe.

In a letter sent to the feds last year, 19 women detailed a litany of failures: there are too few experienced investigators, and insufficient training; evidence is too often overlooked; and victims are too often treated as if they’ve done something to invite the assault. Women of color bear the brunt of these failures, they say, and gay and transgender and disabled people are especially likely to get short shrift. Many of the claims tracked a devastating report by the city’s Department of Investigation, which also said acquaintance rapes are routinely downgraded.

Whether all this amounts to a pattern of sex discrimination remains to be seen. The feds acknowledge “that the NYPD has already taken steps to address these concerns.”

No one who’s lived through sexual abuse should be shamed and traumatized again when they seek justice. If it takes the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to ensure that that low bar is upheld, so be it.