‘Restoring faith’ in SVU
New boss wants hike in rape reports
The new head of the NYPD’s sex-crimes unit — which the Department of Investigation skewered for poor staffing and training — said Thursday she’ll know she’s doing a good job if the number of reported rapes goes up.
“Rape is such an underreported crime,” Special Victims Division Deputy Chief Judith Harrison told The Post in her East Village office.
“When I see the numbers go up, then I know that people have faith in the NYPD, faith in the detective bureau, faith in Special Victims.”
The 21-year vet acknowledged that restoring faith in the unit, which was pilloried in a March Department of Investigation report, is no small task, but it’s also not one she finds too daunting.
“This has been a dream come true,” said Harrison, who previously headed two Queens precincts. “You’re really advocating for a vulnerable population, people that need you.”
It’s with that goal in mind that Harrison is overhauling her unit both physically and philosophically to serve victims in their most traumatic moments.
“Sometimes if you’re looking at a robbery, the justice is an arrest,” she explained. “Throughout my career, I’ve worked in areas where . . . it’s been all offender-based: ‘Did you get the collar? Did you get the perp?’
“But with sex crimes, the justice isn’t always the arrest,” Harrison said. “It’s the support you’re giving the survivor.”
In that spirit, Harrison said, her barometer for success won’t inherently be tied to how many cases she closes or predators she gets off the street.
Going forward, Harrison wants victims to be able to say, “[SVD] did all the things that they could possibly do and left no stone unturned,” she said. “When people say that, that’s how I’ll measure the success and it won’t necessarily be, ‘ We got an arrest.’ ”
To better equip the unit’s nearly 300 members to realize that victim-first vision, SVD is either revitalizing existing facilities or opening new bases across all five boroughs.
Cops, representatives for the DA’s office and counselors will all be under one roof. The goal is to make the locations onestop destinations, to minimize stress on already fraught sexcrimes victims.
“Everything will be at that one place, so you’re not telling the victim you have to go here for this, you have to go there for that,” Harrison said. “It’s going to have everything the victim could possibly need in this one area.”
In shoring up SVD’s dilapidated facilities, Harrison is directly remedying a key gripe of the DOI audit, which, much like her new job, she welcomes as a challenge.
“Anything that highlights areas where you can service people better is a good thing,” Harrison insisted. “That’s why I don’t see it as a negative.”
But in her first two weeks on the job, Harrison has held two “major staff meetings” and made it a priority to listen to critics within the division as well as those outside it.
“Basically, what they’re saying is they want more personnel,” Harrison said, bearing out another critique of the DOI report.
But she notes the answer isn’t as simple as blindly throwing bodies at the problem.
“This is difficult work, [and] this is challenging work . . . I want people who want to do the job,” she said. “I did put that out there: If you don’t want to be here, then there would be no harm, no foul.”
Only two people left. One was already in the process of transferring to another agency, and another member retired.
In keeping with her theme of turning down no counsel, Harrison met Monday with her predecessor, Michael Osgood, who filed for retirement last week rather than accept a transfer to Staten Island.
Former DOI Commissioner Mark Peters has publicly suggested that Osgood was transferred out of SVD by the department as retribution for cooperating with the DOI’s probe of the division.
But Osgood came bearing no ill will against his successor, she said.
“There wasn’t any animosity,” according to Harrison, who said that they mostly talked shop, and he offered her his cellphone number for future advice.
“He wished me well,” she added.