Apparently a federal criminal investigation was just started. Here’s a rundown of the facts:
1.) The woman, 19 at the time, called 911 this past July because some teenage girls were throwing bricks at her house and trying to kick down the door.
2.) The officers who responded ignored the teens (who were still outside) and proceeded to get everyone but the woman out of the house. This included:
a.) Having her call someone to pick up her children;
b.) Handcuffing her brother and taking him to the squad car, claiming that there was a missing persons report on him, despite the fact that she provided documentation proving that she was his legal guardian; and
c.) Giving her boyfriend (the father of her two children) money to walk to the store a few blocks away to buy bottled water (rejecting the offer of tap water).
3.) The women alleges that one of the officers then asked her to follow him to the back of the house to show him the broken windows, where he dropped his pants and demanded oral sex, after which he raped her without a condom.
4.) The woman then ran outside crying that she’d been raped, and a struggle followed. The officer called in for backup, so there were now at least a dozen officers on the scene. The woman told the backup officers what had happened and asked to be taken to the hospital. She was laughed at and taken to jail instead.
5.) At the police station, the woman attempted to tell several other people, including the booking officer and a sergeant, that she’d been raped and asked them to please take her to a hospital. They all simply accused her of lying. Finally, about 12 hours after her inital 911 call, she was seen by someone from internal affairs, who called for an ambulance.
6.) The woman was further interviewed at the hospital by the IA detective, who seemed to believe her. However, she was taken back to jail and held for two more days with no charges at all.
7.) The officer accused of raping the woman claimed during the investigation that he did not. However, he also claimed that they’d had consensual sex months before, which he later admitted to be a lie. It turned out that the officer accused of rape had in fact pulled the woman over for a traffic violation and attempted to give her his phone number at that time.
8.) As a result of the initial investigation, the officer was fired for “idling and loafing,” which would be the punishment for consensual sex while on duty (or, for that matter, sleeping). The woman he is accused of raping has dropped out of school, been evicted, attempted suicide, and is very close to losing custody of her younger brother.
I’d like to offer a big RO **fuck you **to everyone involved here: the rapist, his partner, the officers who responded, the officers at the station who ignored her, the IA detective who let her be taken back to jail, and the DAs who ignored her calls and declined to prosecute.