In the last year, the public’s attention has turned to police brutality, with a focus on some of the most egregious cases: murder by police officers; excessive, unjustified use of force; harassment of communities of color; and abuses of power. However, there’s a form of misconduct that is rarely talked about but just as devastating: sexual violence by police officers.
The scarce public discourse about sexual violence is not a fluke — it’s by design due to the relative secrecy that police operate within. The public is expected to report sexual assault to police, but what happens when a police officer is the abuser and shielded from being held accountable?
A significant barrier to oversight of how law enforcement agencies respond to sexual assault by police officers is the Law-Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBOR). LEOBOR makes police misconduct and investigations secret, keeping the public from knowing about alleged misconduct, how police departments addressed the misconduct, whether the officer was disciplined and the names of officers who have been accused of misconduct — even if they have been accused multiple times. When officers engage in acts of sexual violence, their misconduct gets swept under the rug.
We need to look no further than the New Castle County Police Department to see these abuses at play in Delaware.
The former deputy chief of New Castle County police, Quinton Watson, was accused of sexual harassment by six women, who worked for the NCCPD for up to 20 years. Because misconduct records are considered private documents, further details about the allegations and what the police leaders knew were unknown to the public. In addition, the public was not afforded the right to know how the police department handled the allegations. Like many accounts of police misconduct, the allegations only came to the public’s attention through media reports, when the women decided to share their stories after years of inaction by the county and the police department.
Police officers have the unique power to take the lives of Delawareans into their hands. Sexual assault survivors are often doubly traumatized first by the act, then by the process of coming forward. Imagine the abuser is the person entrusted with investigating and arresting those who violate the law and the fear the survivor might experience by stepping forward. Thus, sexual assault by police becomes even harder to report. In 2021, former Wilmington Police Officer Thomas R. Oliver Jr. was sentenced to only a year of probation after being convicted of official misconduct for forcing a woman to perform oral sex after stopping her on a city street in 2018. That’s not real accountability.
Police misconduct in the form of sexual violence happens here, and it needs to be scrutinized in the same ways that we examine all other forms of misconduct.
When law enforcement officers talk about “humanizing the badge,” it is two-pronged: Law enforcement officers are human, just like everyone else, and with that, agencies are susceptible to a culture of racism, sexism, misogyny and homophobia. By making police misconduct and investigations public, the gaps in how agencies handle misconduct will become visible. Moreover, it strengthens public trust when the facts show that police departments and officers addressed allegations appropriately. Conversely, hiding the facts increases community distrust of law enforcement agencies.
We need to amend LEOBOR, so true accountability can take place for all forms of police misconduct — both inside police departments and in the communities they serve.
Chrysanthi Leon, JD, Ph.D, is an associate professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware.
