Justice Department must keep up its investigation of NYPD discarding rape cases

The Department of Justice is currently weighing whether to continue its investigation into the NYPD’s Special Victims Division. I am one of the survivors who sparked the investigation.

Nearly 10 years ago, I woke up in a Brooklyn hospital with no memory of how I had gotten there. My brain felt scrambled and foggy.

I knew I had gone to happy hour with two male coworkers the day before. The last moment I clearly remembered was one of them asking me a question to which I struggled to respond.

Then everything went black.

The triage notes I received from the hospital offered a clue: pinpoint pupils. This detail suggested a drug, not alcohol alone.

I chose to complete a sexual assault evidence kit — commonly known as a rape kit — and file a police report. But when a detective arrived from the Brooklyn Special Victims Division, the first thing he asked me was, “Is this really a case of assault or regret?”

He said there wasn’t much to go on because of my fragmented memory and insisted I do a tape-recorded “controlled call” to my alleged rapist to see if he would confess.

There was nothing controlled about it. He didn’t prep me, other than give me a flimsy script: Buddy up to him. Say you had a great time, but that you can’t remember all the details and could he fill in the blanks. 

The call, unsurprisingly, didn’t result in a confession. Afterward, the detective handed me a form that he said would put my case on hold, pending further incriminating evidence.

But he would never try to get further incriminating evidence, such as surveillance tapes from the bar, or interview my other coworker. He never even interviewed my rapist. That’s because he knew something I didn’t: The form I had signed was actually a case closure form. 

Two years later, Special Victims Division Deputy Chief Michael Osgood reopened my case after Jane Manning, a former sex crimes prosecutor, advocate and director of Women’s Equal Justice helped me bring it to his attention.

He reviewed my case and put new detectives on it, who interviewed witnesses and tried to retrieve surveillance tapes and receipts. Unfortunately, most of the evidence was long gone.

In 2018, the NYPD shut down my detectives’ investigative unit and moved Chief Osgood to head of patrol in Staten Island.

Manning and I, along with another survivor, met with police leadership the next day to plead for our cases and explain how our original detectives hadn’t investigated them properly.

A few months later, the NYPD established a much smaller Drug and Alcohol Facilitated Analytical team — and put my original detective on it.

In the years since I first went public, I have met many survivors who have shared similar horror stories about the NYPD, ranging from skeptical officers, poorly prepped controlled calls and shoddy investigations, to outright abuse.

The issues are systemic, shameful and maddeningly not new. 

In 2010, a working group recommended improvements the Special Victims Division could make to better respond to sex crimes, including investigating misdemeanor sex crimes and requiring that its detectives, not patrol officers, respond to victims in emergency rooms.

Caseloads exploded from 3,657 in 2010 to 5,725 in 2012, but staffing levels didn’t increase. In 2009, before the influx of cases, they had 72 investigators for adult sex crimes. Between 2012 and 2017, they averaged 73.5.

As a result, many cases like mine were not properly investigated. In fact, the NYPD has a high number of so-called “unfounded” case closures — defined by the FBI as investigations that show “no offense occurred nor was attempted.” 

From 2014 to 2016, the NYPD “unfounded” more than 16 percent of rapes. It’s a suspiciously high rate — the Los Angeles Police Department unfounded 3 percent or less during that same period.

A 2021 report from the Research Triangle Institute International and commissioned by the NYPD found that controlled calls were presented to victims “on a regular basis” and sometimes as an “all or nothing” option for case progression — despite rarely resulting in a suspect’s admission of guilt.

These fundamental issues are why I signed on to a letter to the Justice Department asking for an investigation into the Special Victims Division. 

We have waited three years to see the findings, which should validate what we already know — that the NYPD has engaged in systemic bias against women for years.

By making its findings public and enforcing reforms, the Justice Department would address the widespread issues survivors have experienced for more than a decade — but more importantly, send a signal nationwide that women matter and deserve equality under the law.

Anything less would tell survivors like me that justice was never the point.

Leslie McFadden is a survivor and former journalist whose pursuit of justice helped trigger a federal investigation into the NYPD Special Victims Division.