What To Read This Week
1. Low Solve Rates In Rape Cases Plague Police Departments
Last week, Protect and Serve reported on public records revealing that the Austin, Texas police department has solved fewer than 1-in-5 rape cases—or 17%—over the past three years. That number seemed so low to us that we wondered if the Austin Police Department is the worst big city department in the country at solving rapes. Tragically, they are not. Based on public records obtained by Protect and Serve, there are at least three departments that solve a lower percentage of rape cases:
The Baltimore Police Department solved 14.3% of rape cases, leaving 85.7% unsolved, between January 1, 2021 through April 17, 2023.
The San Jose Police Department allowed 86.3% of rape cases to go unsolved, solving just 13.7% in 2021, which is the most recent data the department sent us.
The San Diego Police Department cleared just 9.5% of rape cases last year. In other words, at least 90.6% of perpetrators “got away with it.”
2. “I’m this close to shooting you in the face”
Back in 2017, a new recruit for the Milwaukee Police Department, participated in a middle school event intended to increase trust between police officers and children in the community. After the event, a local eighth-grader told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that she “learned that they're here to protect the city, and we shouldn't be scared of the police.”
Fast forward to 2021. That’s when a 911 dispatcher sent police to the house of that same recruit—now a young officer—to investigate an allegation of domestic violence, following a call from his live-in girlfriend, with whom he shared a child. The dispatcher noted that the officer’s girlfriend was crying during the entire call while their child [also] could be heard crying in the background: “My boyfriend just hit me in the face … My lip [is] busted … Swollen a little bit,” she told 911 dispatchers. His girlfriend later told police investigators that “when she got hit she feared for her safety,” especially since he had said to her—“I’m this close to shooting you in the face.”
Photos from the incident appeared to be consistent with the account that the girlfriend gave to the 911 operator and the investigators. The officer acknowledged that the situation “got pretty heated” and that he had “called her the ‘B’ word” and a “h-o-e’”.
The officer’s girlfriend ultimately chose not to cooperate with the investigation.
As Alexandra Heal explained in an unrelated feature story for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, partners of police officers frequently don’t cooperate with investigations because:
“Multiple women have told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism they suffered emotional or physical abuse at the hands of police officer partners, and that they believe their partners used their professional positions to seek to intimidate or harass them. From across the country we heard claims that alleged abusers got their partners repeatedly arrested, stalked them in marked cars, or warned them there was no point going to the police because the force was ‘a family.’
Some were too scared to ever report it. For those that did go to the police, the experience only served to traumatize them further, they say. They feel their partners’ colleagues failed to adequately follow up on serious allegations and that they were discouraged from making statements. Some complained about their treatment but the complaints were not upheld.”
That reporting focused on officers in the UK, but there are countless similar articles and studies in the context of U.S. policing, and we featured this one because of the clarity and concision of the writing. And, like so often happens across the pond, and across the U.S., the Milwaukee police officer whose girlfriend called 911 didn’t face prosecution or suffer any meaningful consequences.
But there are consequences for law enforcement when officers engage in acts of domestic violence.
Think back to that 8th grade girl whose impression after spending time with the new recruit was that the police are “here to protect the city, and we shouldn't be scared of the police.” Now imagine that the same young girl needs to call 911 due to a domestic abuse incident in her own house—if she had heard the officer’s girlfriend’s voice on the 911 recording or had seen pictures of her bruised face, would she feel safe if that officer responded to her call?
Of course not. And that’s how communities lose faith in law enforcement.
3. “A Former Philly Homicide Detective Is Facing More Sexual Assault Charges…”
Donald Suchinksy, a 34-year veteran detective with the Philadelphia Police Department who was already facing charges of sexually assaulting a victim’s mother, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, was charged with additional sex crimes last week including “rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, and official oppression,” Chris Palmer reported for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The new case involves allegations that Detective Suchinksy raped the “sister of a man who was killed in 2017 [after] he was assigned to investigate” his death. The woman alleges that Suchinksy “used threatening language to intimidate her to stay silent” and that they “had sex about 10 times over five years.”
And here are more details from the Inky’s Chris Palmer about the earlier case against Suchinsky:
“[The] charges stemmed from accusations made by a woman whose son was killed in the fall of 2020. She told authorities that shortly after she met Suchinsky—who was assigned to investigate her son’s murder—he began communicating with her in ways that were odd and unrelated to the investigation, including calling and emailing her to ask for photos of herself or suggesting that the two of them should meet up. At one point, the woman said, she drove to the former police headquarters for an update on the case, and Suchinsky got into her car to help her look for a parking space. As they drove around, she said, Suchinsky, while in the passenger seat, began groping her and digitally penetrated her. ‘I was frozen,’ the woman said at a preliminary hearing last month. ‘A little numb.’”
Meanwhile, Philadelphia’s local public radio station, WHYY, reported earlier this month that the Philadelphia Police Department barely solved one-third (36%) of the city’s murders last year. That means that police officers fail to hold accountable two-thirds of the people who commit a murder in Philadelphia. One major reason for this failure to solve murders is a persistent inability of the police department to gain the community’s trust. Needless to say, allegations that a homicide detective is raping victim family members doesn’t help.