Power imbalance: Did an Oklahoma cop use his badge to force women into sex?
Former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw stopped them while walking down the street. He asked them if they were carrying drugs, and told them to lift their shirts or drop their pants just to make sure. Sometimes he checked under their clothes himself. Others, he texted or Facebook messaged later, hoping to meet up. He even visited some of them at home.
All of this is according to court testimony from women who say Daniel Holtzclaw sexually assaulted them.
One alleged victim said Holtzclaw stopped her while driving and asked her to show him her private parts, before forcing her to perform oral sex on him. Holtzclaw’s defense attorneys say that victim was stoned when the stop occurred, implying her story is unreliable.
In his opening statement, Holtzclaw’s attorney described these women as having “street smarts like you can’t imagine.” What the lawyer failed to mention is the power imbalance between these women and a cop who could make their lives difficult. Holtzclaw’s alleged victims often had criminal records, and his alleged interactions with them show how much a police officer can abuse his authority against those who are most vulnerable.
Holtzclaw is on trial after 13 victims, all black women, accused him of sexual assault and rape. If the women’s claims are proven true, it’s a horrific abuse of power. But many worry Holtzclaw will get off since the trial is being heard by an all-white jury in Oklahoma City.
Officer abuse isn’t as uncommon as you might think. After a yearlong investigation, the Associated Press found that over the past six years, more than 1,000 police officers have been kicked off the force because of sexual assault, rape or sodomy.
“This is affecting all women, all classes and it is important that we discuss it — that we discuss the systematic issue of sexual assault by police officers, those in authority,” said Grace Franklin, an activist who co-founded OKC Artists for Justice in Oklahoma City.
Franklin says that when an officer threatens a woman who is poor, or has a criminal record, she doesn’t have a lot of options. It’s unlikely she can afford a lawyer and she’s afraid of having charges added to her rap sheet.
“The black community — we have a tenuous relationship with the police. So when we’re threatened, we believe them,” Franklin said.
Holtzclaw went even further. He allegedly told some of the women he could make their legal problems go away.
Many of the women who’ve taken the stand have described the fear they had in coming forward, because of the power imbalance.
“I didn’t think anyone would believe me,” one said.
“It is my word against his,” another one told the court. “I left it alone and prayed that I never met him again.”
Spring Lake, the neighborhood where Holtzclaw patrolled, gets fewer calls to the police than other neighborhoods, according to the police captain in the trial. “People deal with things on their own,” he said. And that’s one more reason a cop might think he could get away with abusing his power.
Thirteen women have come forward so far, and hopefully the jury can weigh the evidence objectively and determine whether their stories are true.
But by framing the alleged victims as poor, black women with criminal records, the defense team hopes to delegitimize their claims in the eyes of the jury. And that plays into the potential reasoning behind Holtzclaw’s alleged actions: These were women who could be victimized without consequence because society doesn’t value them.
Holtzclaw’s family released a statement last year saying the case is “based on solicited testimony by the police department of felons, prostitutes and others who would have personal motives beyond the basic truth to fabricate their stories.”
Franklin, the Oklahoma City activist who is following the case, worries that this argument dehumanizes the women.
“I’m hoping that [the jury] can see the evidence and not focus on the subtext of his defense attorney which is, ‘He, in his pristine delicate naiveté, would never touch these dirty women, he would never rape these women,” Franklin said.
Justice, after all, is supposed to be blind.
Just because these women are poor, just because they’re black, doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to be respected and protected by police.
