NYPD Defends Sex Crimes Work From Council's Criticisms

NEW YORK, NY — City Council lawmakers lambasted the NYPD Monday for leaving its sex crimes force understaffed for years as police brass defended the Special Victims Division as top-notch.

"It seems to me that we’re victimizing victims all over again," Councilman Donovan Richards (D-Queens), the Public Safety Committee chairman, said.

Monday's testy oversight hearing followed a March 27 Department of Investigation report that found the Police Department left the SVD's adult sex crime units with too few investigators as their caseload skyrocketed over the last nine years, pushing them to prioritize "stranger rapes" over other cases.

Lawmakers criticized the NYPD for putting "inexperienced" cops — including officers who aren't yet detectives — on crucial squads that deal with highly sensitive cases.

But police officials rejected that, saying the average Special Victims investigator has more than six years of police experience. The division is among the hardest squads to join, Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said — only 20 percent of cops who apply get in.

"To keep repeating that these individuals are somehow ineffective or deficient I believe is wrong," Oleg Chernyavsky, the NYPD's legislative affairs director, told lawmakers.

The NYPD officially moved 20 new investigators into the adult sex crime units Monday, growing their ranks to 100 to address the deluge of rape cases that has flowed in since the fall, police officials said. That's up from fewer than 80 at the end of last year.

Cops recorded 382 rapes in the first three months of 2018, up nearly 25 percent from 2017. More than a third — 130 — happened before this year, and about a quarter of those happened more than five years ago, said Susan Herman, the deputy commissioner for collaborative policing.

The extra staff means each investigator will now take about 58 cases a year, Boyce said, down from as many as 93.

Lawmakers, though, questioned whether the NYPD puts its best people on sex crimes cases.

Some sex crimes investigators — 13 of 76 last year — are "white shields," officers who take cases but are not yet detectives. Richards criticized their presence on a force that investigates tough-to-prosecute crimes that leave victims vulnerable, especially given the fact that white shields aren't allowed on the NYPD's Homicide Squad.

"We’re taking minimal steps to fill gaps with, I’m sorry, from my opinion, inexperienced individuals who should not really be dealing with people who've experienced this level of trauma," Richards said.

Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal (D-Manhattan) questioned why the sex crime squads haven't gotten larger since lawmakers approved funding hire 1,200 more cops in recent years.

"You’re telling me that you have constrained resources and the number of cases here has gone up by 65 percent and there’s really been no change in the number of officers here," Rosenthal, the Committee on Women chairwoman, said. "You’re a 10-billion-dollar agency, am I wrong? You don’t have resources?"

Four councilwomen, including Rosenthal, have proposed separate bills that would require the NYPD to revamp sex crimes training for all cops, boost Special Victims Division staffing levels and use a "modern" case management system that protects victims' privacy. The department opposes all four in their current forms, Chernyavsky said.

Police officials chafed at the Council's criticisms. The SVD has grown to 218 staffers as of last year from just 149 in 2010, and each investigator gets "comprehensive specialized training" in how to handle sex crimes, Chief of Department Terence Monahan said.

The division lets sex crime survivors dictate how far investigations go and at what pace they proceed, giving them a "sense of control" over the process, Monahan said. The Police Department has also launched a program that will put advocates to help crime victims in every precinct by the end of the summer, Herman said.

"In most areas of policing the NYPD is very good, in some areas we are the best, but in all areas we can get better," Monahan said.

(Lead image: Councilman Donovan Richards speaks at a City Council hearing in March 2018. Photo by William Alatriste/New York City Council)