Solydweb

On Wednesday, Captain Peter Rose of the NYPD’s 94th Precinct announced that the department wasn’t “too worried” about a recent rise in rapes — because many of the alleged victims knew their assailants and had met them off of Tinder or “hookup sites.”

The Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint saw a 62 percent rise in reported rapes in 2016 — from 8 to 13. The majority did not result in arrests. In explaining these statistics to DNAinfo, Rose focused on how many of the victims knew their alleged attackers. “Some of them were Tinder, some of them were hookup sites, some of them were actually coworkers. It’s not a trend that we’re too worried about because out of 13 [sex attacks], only two were true stranger rapes,” he said, according to DNAinfo. “If there’s a true stranger rape, a random guy picks up a stranger off the street, those are the troubling ones. That person has, like, no moral standards.”

The implications being, of course, that acquaintance rapists do have moral standards and that acquaintance rape, despite being the most common form of rape, is not troubling. At a community council meeting on Wednesday, Rose said, “They’re not total-abomination rapes where strangers are being dragged off the streets.” So, it seems in his mind, there is a hierarchy of awfulness when it comes to rape and, somehow, knowing one’s assailant, as most victims do, makes it not as bad.

In a statement to Vocativ, Deputy Commissioner Stephen P. Davis said, “Captain Rose’s comments did not properly explain the complexity of issues involved with investigating rape complaints. Every report of rape is thoroughly investigated by specially trained detectives in the NYPD’s Special Victims Unit. All complaints of rape and other types of sexual crimes are taken seriously whether they are committed by domestic partners, acquaintances, or strangers.” The statement continued on to encourage victims to report their rapes.



Sonia Ossorio, president of the National Organization for Women of New York, told Vocativ, “The belief that there is a huge distinction between stranger rapes and acquaintance rapes permeates all levels of law enforcement. It’s the singular or key reason an epidemic of rape continues.”

None too surprisingly, activists are calling for Rose to be fired, including Nita Chaudhary, co-founder of the women’s advocacy organization UltraViolet. “Rape is a crime — whether you know the rapist or not, whether you are on Tinder or not — and it is the responsibility of law enforcement to investigate, prosecute and hold rapists accountable for their crimes — period, full stop,” she said in a press release.

Chaudhary added, “An increase in rape should alarm the NYPD and cause them to redouble their efforts to arrest rapists. Instead, Captain Peter Rose and the NYPD are engaging in victim-blaming of the worst kind while judging which rapes they deem to be legitimate and which they do not,” she said. “With comments like these, it is not surprising that survivors of sexual assault don’t feel comfortable reporting and cooperating with police authorities who dismiss the seriousness of violence against women.”