43 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
Former sex crimes detective for many years in one of the most backward-thinking, low paying, behind-the-times states in the country.
What this detective (and his department) eventually started doing has always been the norm--even here.
Any detective who acted the way this guy did prior to his sudden "groundbreaking" realization that you should treat sexual assault victims differently than victims of other types of crimes and, ya know, maybe spend a little more time on these difficult cases, was just being a terrible investigator.
Articles like this infuriate me. This is yet another article that tries to paint law enforcement as a whole with a broad and negative brush. They portray this guy as some groundbreaking "bad cop turned good cop" to push the idea that the rest of us should try to be like him. When in reality, this guy is just now catching up to where most of us have been since forever. This article SHOULD have been about condemning this detective and his entire agency for being so terrible at their jobs for so long, not about celebrating that they finally got their head in the game and started doing what their citizens paid them to do.
Not so fun fact about sexual assault cases: It's almost ALWAYS a "he said, she said" scenario. All the physical evidence in the world points to what? That sex took place? Most suspects will readily admit that! The defense is always "it was consensual". Tell me how you prove that it wasn't?
Short of a video, reliable witness, or a confession from the suspect, we almost always end up with nothing. This is why interview skills are so critical, a suspect confession is usually what makes or breaks these types of cases. And anyone accused of rape/sexual assault usually understands the severity of the charge and lawyers up. Once that happens, you're not getting a confession.
So many rape/sexual cases go unsolved not because we don't believe the victim's story, but because we simply cannot prove it happened that way she said it did. And like many others already stated--I'd rather let 10 guilty people go free than send up a file that gets one innocent person wrongly convicted. Especially on a sex crime charge which, even if you're found not guilty in court, is significantly life-altering.
Comment by ILikeNeurons at 26/12/2022 at 22:35 UTC*
-16 upvotes, 0 direct replies
You could ask them to describe what happened. I've tried that with several "falsely accused" rapists on Reddit, and their telling of what qualifies as consent[1] would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic.
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/didslp/today_is_the_2_yr_anniversary_of_metoo_lets/