Tuesday, May 11, 2010

NYPD apologizes to attempted rape victim

From the Village Voice:

Now, the Voice has learned that the NYPD downgraded a felony sexual assault in a park in upper Manhattan earlier this year to a misdemeanor.

The incident was only reclassified and upgraded to a felony after the victim, journalist Debbie Nathan, protested and the Manhattan District Attorney took the extraordinary step of interviewing the police officers involved and confirming her account. The commander of the 34th Precinct, Deputy Inspector Andrew Capul, was forced to apologize publicly to Nathan in a community hearing. Capul was recently transferred from the precinct.

The Voice contacted the NYPD for comment, but received no response.

Harriet Lessel, the director of the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault, an association of a wide variety of groups involved in sexual assault treatment and prevention, says that NYPD downgrading of sexual assaults from felonies to misdemeanors has become a growing problem over the past 18 months.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The classic shitcan!Very easy to stop. It is a crime to lie to a federal agent.Have the the fbi question every c.o of every unit.

Anonymous said...

And when you are dead with an ax in your head it is only the misdemeanor of barbering without a license.

Anonymous said...

Blame Compstat.

Saskia Z said...

Thanks for posting this--hopefully some public interest will go a long way towards solving these problems.

Also, if you are interested in learning more about sexual assault in NYC and the work being done by the NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault we hope you will visit the website (www.svfreenyc.org).