Police Predators: A Systemic Issue

If you’ve paid attention to the right wing culture war recently, you know their latest target is the LGBTQ+ community, especially those who are teachers or drag queens. Any post from Libs of Tik Tok will have hundreds of comments vilifying queer educators as “groomers” and “pedophiles” for simply existing. Drag queens who read at public libraries are demonized and have been attacked multiple times by Proud Boys, Neo-Nazis, and Christian Nationalists. Most recently, a bakery that advertised a family-friendly drag queen show was vandalized with homophobic rhetoric and Christian supremacy. What right-wingers never seem to recognize, however, is the prevalence of actual grooming, pedophilia, and sexual misconduct within the police departments they desperately want to fund.

According to the Associated Press, the numbers we do have pertaining to police sexual misconduct are “unquestionably an undercount because [they] represent only those officers whose licenses to work in law enforcement were revoked, and not all states take such action.” The data does not include records from California or New York, because they do not have statewide systems to decertify officers. Lastly, the study does not include officers whose decertifications were reported only in the news and not by their departments. Even with these limitations in mind, the statistics are quite bleak. Approximately 1,000 officers lost their badges in a 6 year period for various forms of sexual misconduct, from having sex on-duty to child pornography, molestation, and rape.

A 2010 study from the Cato Institute found that police officers commit sexual assault at twice the national average and that it is the second most common complaint after excessive force.

A study by Cara Rabe-Hemp, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Illinois State University, found that in nearly half of cases, officers charged with sexual assault had previously been accused of sexual misconduct — between 2 and 21 allegations — but remained on the force. Even when an officer was terminated or allowed to resign, they were able to quietly move on to another department.

Yet another study by Samuel Walker and Dawn Irlbeck, both professors of Criminal Justice, found that, in a 2 year span, 183 news stories about police sexual misconduct were published, with just under half of the victims being minors. 31 of the stories involved teenage “Explorers,”children who enrolled in programs to ride along with police officers and get a sense of what a career in policing is like. The study’s authors also note that many cases actually involve multiple acts by a single officer or acts of abuse by several officers. Therefore, the number of victims of sexual misconduct by police and the number of times an individual police officer engages in sexual abuse far exceeds the numbers of cases reported.

In perhaps the biggest nationwide study of police sexual misconduct, Dr. Philip M. Stinson, a Professor of Criminal Justice at Bowling Green State University, found “548 arrest cases in the years 2005-2007 of 398 officers.” These officers were “employed by 328 nonfederal law enforcement agencies…43 states and the District of Columbia.” Most victims whose ages were known (approximately 236 of the total cases) were children. Dr. Stinson also notes that “it cannot be overstated” how difficult it is to get this information without court orders, information requests, or otherwise bureaucratic means. Similar to previous studies, there are a substantial number of multiple-time offenders. In fact, “Sixty-six of the…officers have more than one case…ranging from one arrested officer with 14 cases to 36 arrested officers with two cases.”

When looking at the demographics of the perpetrators of police sexual misconduct, there are some interesting findings:

• 99.1% of offenders were male officers
• 81.9% of offenders were patrol officers
• There was a nearly 50/50 split between on-duty and off-duty offenses
• More than half of offenses were by officers with 10 or less years on the job
• Municipal police departments had the majority of offenders
• Nearly half of offenders were officers in the South
• The majority of offenders worked in Metropolitan counties

In addition to these damning numbers, there has also been action taken by multiple police unions to prevent civilian oversight committees from investigating sexual misconduct. One such union is the NYC PBA claiming that “having sex while on duty did not amount to police sexual misconduct, is not an abuse of authority and, therefore, not under the CCRB [Civilian Complaint Review Board] mandate.” The Chicago FOP also referred to their contract, specifically that “one of the contract’s current provisions requires a civilian who files complaints against police to sign a sworn affidavit under threat of perjury,” a stipulation which reform advocates say will discourage victims of police sexual abuse from coming forward.

These numbers, which again, are a massive undercount, paint a picture of a profession rife with grooming, abuse, and pedophilia. The inherent power of the position draws in those who wish to victimize others and their fellow officers and unions have their backs until the moment they get put away. It’s hard to take the fake concerns of conservatives over “grooming” seriously when they consistently funnel money into these institutions that have systematically swept sexual assault and child sexual abuse under the rug.

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