Friday, July 19, 2013

Sexual misconduct involving on-duty officers

I continuously recommend that anyone involved in Internal Affairs matters should daily check out a website: policemisconduct.net.  This site was taken over by the CATO Institute about a year ago.  Every day it uses twitter to capture news reports concerning police misconduct.  Every day there are 7 to 15 incidents summarized in a one or two line narrative with a link to the actual news story and/or video.  Most of these incidents are investigations, arrests, pleas or convictions of officers for various acts of misconduct.  Unfortunately, it seems like sexual misconduct is the most frequent.  What are some of the lessons that can be learned from this nationwide perspective?
            First, it is not an infrequent event.  The age of officers involved does not seem to be a significant factor with senior officers being charged as often as newer officers.  The size of the agency also isn’t a factor.  Small, medium and large agencies as well as urban and rural are commonly involved.  One common denominator appears to be the victim – vulnerable women.  Most of the time it’s a male officer and the victim is female.  Occasionally it is a male on male incident.  Rarely do these accounts involve a female officer.
            What do I mean by the victim being a vulnerable woman?  In some way the authority of the officer is used to facilitate the sexual encounter.  It might be a traffic ticket, DUI arrest, heavily intoxicated person, drug addict, street prostitute, suicidal person or student.  Of course there are the cases involving police groupies.  Probably the most despicable is the victim of domestic violence who is consoled by the investigating officer who later flips it into a sexual relationship. 
            I’m sure that some of the officers would simply contend that these are consensual encounters.  That’s from the officer’s viewpoint.  The fact that the victim doesn’t scream, fight or protest doesn’t mean that it’s not an abuse of authority by the officer.  The officer has control of that woman.  Any subsequent sex is not consensual!
            The other common element in these occurrences is that rarely do they involve just one victim.  Once the incident is out of the bag, more victims commonly come forward.
            What concerns me the most is that this misconduct is rarely done in isolation.  Others on the police or sheriff department know or suspect what’s happening.  During our agency audits we frequently know within days who the “skirt chasers” are.  If those of us on the audit team can learn that in just a couple of days, why don’t those on the department step forward?  When this misconduct is discovered, it’s a black mark on everyone in the agency.  There is commonly a breakdown of field supervision when the officer can engage in this type of misconduct on duty and not become noticed.  The supervisor is not looking or is simply not out on the street where s/he should be.
            This is something that should not continue!  This is a scab on professional policing.  It’s time to stand up and be vocal.  It’s time to use real life examples during basic and in-service training, rather than philosophical points of view.  This is the dirty side of law enforcement and it can be stopped!