To Serve, Protect, and Rape
A look at how police rape women
When white people think of the police they might describe them as peacemakers, protectors, and safe havens. Whenever my African American eyes lays eyes on a male cop (of any race), I see an potential threat, enemy, or murderer. I avoid confrontation at all costs. In cases of no escape, I make sure I don’t look “suspect” by fluffing my voice with the most stereotypical valley girl accent I can perform. I sprinkle the conversation with a smile so exaggeratedly jolly and have the most relieved goodbye. The police are supposed to serve and protect everyone in America,not just white people. Everyone should feel comfortable to come to cops in times of danger or trouble. Instead, police are oftentimes the causes of danger. Policemen have been raping women for many years and have gotten away with it numerous times. Because of the policemen’s social position, many of them believe they are exempt from the law; believing that they are the law and indestructible. With rape on the rise, even white women might have an altered view on cops.
Although people esteem police men as protectors of the law, many of them can’t keep the law themselves. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, “Police officers are arrested about 1,100 times a year, or roughly three officers charged every day.” Of the officers arrested, 95 percent of them are men and significant numbers of sexual rape crimes were discovered.
Additionally, researchers at Bowling Green State University conducted the first-ever nationwide examination at police crime, with the allowance of the Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice. The research of criminalized officers lasted seven years, 2005 to 2011, it was intended to quantify the common occurrence of police officers being arrested around the country, and also show how law enforcement agencies reprimand police officers who are arrested and their arrests might connect with other forms of misconduct. They found that “6,724 cases, or about 960 cases per year, involving about 792 officers per year — 674 officers were arrested more than once”. This study shows that many of the policemen that were arrested were arrested on more than one occasion. From this data, it can logically made certain that cops who were tried rapist was allowed back on the force.
Anna, an eighteen year old Hispanic girl from Brooklyn, was raped by two cops in an unmarked police van. She plead with the two men multiple times to stop as she was getting raped. After the incident, the police men dropped her off on the side of the road. The cops who raped her made no arrest, issued no citation, and filed no paperwork about the stop. Anna informed detectives that she was raped and wanted her rapists convicted. “Of the sexual assault incidents charged by police that went to court, two in every five (40%) court charges remained sexual assault”.
Sharon Marcus, author of “Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words: A Theory and Politics of Rape Prevention”, relates rape as something that is real but must be defined indefinitely. She holds that rape is a language that must be understood to be prevented. Marcus believes that women are socially affected by rape and can do things to prevent it. Marcus says that a way to understand rape to look at in as an linguistic fact is to examine it in speech. She writes, “Many rapists initially engage their targets in friendly or threatening conversation; many speak a great deal during the rape and demand that the women whom they rape either talk to them or recite particular phrases”. In the case of Anna, the cops ordered her to go to the van. The cops didn’t have to verbally threaten Anna because of their power. Because the police ordered Anna to do something, she complied in order to not be held in contempt. Anna was obeying the law so her compliance to her attackers was justified.
Marcus then states, “Women’s non combative responses to rapists often derive as much from the self-defeating rules which govern polite, empathetic feminine conversation as they do from explicit physical fear”. I believe that Anna was probably polite because she understood that the cops were able to kill or harm her with no repercussions as history has stood a testament of. The cops took advantage of their badge and male power by raping a small 18 year old girl. Marcus then writes, “To prevent rape, women must resist self-defeating notions of polite feminine speech as well as develop physical self-defense tactics.” Although her statement of preventable rape tactics of women being smug and being able to fight their attackers is plausible, only bad consequences would only come of Anna fighting or being unresponsive.
If Anna tried to resist the police, they would continue to pursue her. In that instance, Marcus says to fight. If Anna was capable of beating up two six feet men, she would still have probable charges against her with no conviction of rape from the policemen. With evidence of semen in Anna’s vagina and security footage of the van, Anna’s attackers were charged during a long deliberation.
Marcus’s theory of rape being defined and understood to be changed is great. I believe rape must be seen through every intersectionality to be understood. Minorities, such as African American and Latino women, are subject to mistrialed. She states, “raped Afra-Americans often do not obtain convictions even in the face of overwhelming evidence of brutalization, raped white women have great difficulty in obtaining convictions against white rapists”. Black and Latino women are at a disadvantage to the racist societal and governmental construct. If white women have a hard time getting tried for rape, it is nearly impossible for a person of color to obtain a conviction. In order to stop rape, not only must we define it, we must understand it by the observing every sexual, political, social, economic, and ethnic demographic of its victims and perpetrators.
