On Wednesday, the Justice Department announced that the Baltimore Police Department had engaged in rampant civil rights violations. Most of the attention has been focused on a pattern of egregious racial bias that dates back several years. However, Friday’s edition of the New York Times revealed that there was another equally outrageous finding in that report. It turns out that sexual assault victims in Charm City were frequently met with callous indifference or outright hostility.
This story, which ran above the fold in Friday’s paper, focuses on pages 122-127 of the 163-page report, “Sexual assault investigations raise concerns about gender bias.” Based on interviews with sexual assault victims and victim advocates, the Justice Department found that the BPD engaged in practices that would shock the conscience of any fair-minded person in this country, regardless of sex. Watch more details from WBAL-TV in Baltimore here.
For instance, victim blaming and victim shaming appeared to be standard operating procedure in the sex crimes unit. Many victims recalled being asked questions like, “Why are you messing that guy’s life up?” They also routinely asked questions that suggested victims brought their ordeals on themselves, and frequently discredited reports coming from victims who waited before going to the police. In a colossal understatement, the Justice Department called such questioning “inappropriate.”
Apparently this mentality extended to prosecutors. In a text message exchange between a prosecutor and a cop, the prosecutor harrumphed that he didn’t feel comfortable bringing a sexual assault case to court because he believed the victim was “a conniving little whore.” The cop’s response? “Lmao! I feel the same way.” When WBAL-TV notified State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby about this, she called the prosecutor’s comments “completely unacceptable,” and promised swift corrective action.
The Justice Department also found that sexual assault investigations in Baltimore frequently ran aground because officers failed to do the most rudimentary police work. In one case, the police never obtained the DNA of a taxi driver suspected of raping a passenger. In another, the police never even contacted an unlicensed cabbie suspected of raping a passenger.
The police routinely failed to get in touch with potential eyewitnesses, as well as “outcry witnesses”–people who are first told about sexual assault. They only tested 15 percent of rape kits over a four-year period. Small wonder that victim advocate Jacqueline Robarge says that she knows of sexual assault victims “who will never go to the police about a rape ever again.”
The Justice Department also found occasions where cops turned into predators themselves. According to the report, a number of cops coerced prostitutes into having sex in return for avoiding arrest, or for payments in the form of cash or drugs.
It’s not the first time that someone has sounded the alarm about how sexual assault victims are treated in Baltimore. In 2010, The Baltimore Sun revealed that, among other things, 40 percent of rape allegations were dismissed without further review by detectives. It was also one of two cites that reported more homicides than rapes. These figures were among many that caused experts to call for an FBI review. Based on this Justice Department report, it is clear this warning wasn’t heeded.
Vanita Gupta, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said that she didn’t find enough to formally cite Baltimore for trampling on women’s civil rights, However, she was “troubled” by evidence of “gender-biased policing.” Gupta was troubled enough that as part of the agreement in principle between the city and the federal government, the city pledged to ensure that it handles sexual assault cases in a manner “consistent with constitutional and legal requirements” and that is free of “explicit or implicit gender bias.”
That agreement will form the basis of a consent decree which will be implemented sometime in late 2016 or early 2017. Hopefully, that decree will include a lengthy period of court supervision. It’s the only way that we will see the root-and-branch reform of this department that is necessary to protect the rights of the people of Baltimore.
