Police Officers Charged

Ryan Fredrick, Reporter

A police officer in Prince George’s County, Maryland, was charged with raping a woman during a traffic stop. He plead not guilty, according to CNN.com.

Police officers in the US were charged with forcible rape 405 times between 2005 and 2013. That is an average of 45 a year. “Forcible fondling” was more common, with 636 instances, according to the article, according to research from Bowling Green State University,

“The idea that these people’s job is to protect civilians is sickening. They are abusing their power and they expect our trust. It’s disgusting that so many rapes take place by the people we are supposed to look up to,” junior Pierce Hartman said.

The BGSU researchers compiled their list by documenting cases of sworn non federal law enforcement officers who have been arrested. But the 2016 federally funded paper, “Police Integrity Lost: A Study of Law Enforcement Officers Arrested,” says the problem is not limited to sexual assault.

“If what they did is real, then obviously it’s atrocious, but sometimes, victims make things and even scenarios up to gain attention. It’s most likely not that bad, and there is no reason to blame every cop. This notion that all cops are bad is ridiculous. There is a small percentage of the cops that do dirty things, but not all cops are bad,” sophomore Seth Chaplin said.

While those numbers represent a fair portion of cases, arrests rely on a victim making a report and a law enforcement agency making that report public, after an arrest or otherwise. With sexual assaults by police officers, neither is guaranteed.

“Police sexual misconduct and cases of police sexual violence are often referred to as hidden offenses, and studies on police sexual misconduct are usually based on small samples or derived from officer surveys that are threatened by a reluctance to reveal these cases,” according to paper,  “Police Integrity Lost”.

While those numbers represent a fair portion of cases, arrests rely on a victim making a report and a law enforcement agency making that report public, after an arrest or otherwise. With sexual assaults by police officers, neither is guaranteed.