A roughly five-year effort studying NYPD sexual violence led to nearly 4,000 responses, which were published last month in what organizers say is the most comprehensive look into the issue to date.
The Community Safety Project, a collaboration between the organizing coalition Communities United for Police Reform and the CUNY Graduate Center’s Public Science Project, led the efforts for “Police Sexual Violence in NYC.”
Through community town halls, surveys, and formal interviews, the report compiles first-hand claims of police sexual violence and unwanted sexualized behavior, including some incidents that respondents said they did not formally report due to the same barriers examined in the study. More than half of the 3,149 survey participants who filled out demographic information identified as Black and/or Brown.
“These findings lay bare what so many New Yorkers, especially Black and Brown women and gender-expansive people, have been saying for years: the NYPD cannot be left to investigate itself,” said city councilmember Crystal Hudson in a statement. “We have a responsibility to meet this crisis with urgency and honesty and build structures of transparency and accountability that actually keep people safe.”
Lead researcher Priscilla Bustamante, a CUNY The Graduate Center Ph.D candidate, says the study stems from community feedback — despite progress following the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements, police and sexual violence were rarely addressed together. Any focus seemed tied to specific high-profile incidents, like the recent arrest of an officer on rape charges in the Bronx. But the report suggests underreporting on police sexual violence and unwanted sexualized behavior due to needing to turn to the NYPD to accuse one of its officers.
The authors hope the findings can motivate legislative change, particularly with mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani entering office next month — his campaign promised $40.3 million toward victim services. Their findings point to long-lasting harms and reluctance to report incidents. And they argue broader officer impunity is much to blame.
“We know this is happening, but all the people I spoke with again and again were saying ‘how can we report this harm back to police forces when it’s done by police officers?’” said Bustamante. “Needing oversight that is independent from NYPD, to be able to hold officers accountable when these things happen…sometimes it is a sheer abuse of power an officer is doing — something that would be considered criminal under the law.”
“But other times, these are considered lawful policing practices, and we look at something like stop and frisk, these are practices that are part of everyday police work, and sometimes just seen as officers doing their job.”
Through the findings, the authors examined how consent works when a badge and a gun are involved, never mind the entire carceral system behind them. “Police work fundamentally includes the use of this power to criminalize, arrest, and detain those targeted — a strong force that can be wielded if the person targeted does not cooperate with officers’ wishes in opportune moments,” the study read. “In these instances, the line between consent and coercion can easily become blurred, particularly in moments of criminalization and/or for those with prior criminalized histories.”
The report is part of a wider “We Deserve to be Safe” study on heavily-policed neighborhoods, which developed the research through town halls co-sponsored by 22 partner organizations, ranging from LIFE Camp, founded by activist Erica Ford, and LGBTQ+ advocacy group, the Audre Lorde Project, to civil rights law firms Center for Constitutional Rights and the NYCLU.
Some of these organizations directly make up the Communities United for Police Reform coalition, which also includes the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Public Advocate Jumaane Williams commended the “We Deserve to be Safe” study’s methodology to wrap anecdotal accounts with data and research to highlight underreported concerns.
“So often we miss the most central part of public safety work: to listen to people on the ground [and] the people with the lived experience — the people who want to be safe the most,” said Williams during the report’s press conference. “The people most impacted by violence want the violence to go down, and if we listen to what they’re saying, we can really assist in that way.”
Ultimately, the specific police sexual violence study recommends more accountability, independent oversight, and resources. The current NYPD watchdog, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, cannot directly discipline offending officers for substantiated misconduct. The authors also suggest reforming the NYPD by reducing stop-and-frisk practices that allow for unwanted physical contact and disbanding “historically abusive units” like the NYPD Vice Squad. Lastly, they called for broader non-police support and response for sexual violence regardless of whether the perpetrator wears a uniform.
“When we think about even just the function of policing, the roles officers can play, they’re not experts [or] specialists in trauma-informed care for survivors or sexual violence in general,” said Bustamante. “One of the biggest findings from this work and other similar work is that there should be people who are trained in crisis intervention, trauma-informed care, and mediation — more important skill sets that survivors need in the moment when these things have happened, to be able to best support them.”
The NYPD did not respond to requests for comment.
The post Police sexual violence concerns outlined in new findings that ‘lay bare’ fears of Black and Brown people in NYC. appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.
