A former Oklahoma City officer, who preyed upon women in the low-income neighborhood he patrolled, has been convicted of sexual assault.
This gross conduct included Holtzclaw being charged with 36 counts for incidents occurring between December 2013 and June 2014. Holtzclaw was then convicted of 18 of those counts connected to eight women.
Holtzclaw’s case was part of an associated press investigation about officer’s sexual misconduct. The yearlong investigation found that nearly 1,000 officers had lost their license for sex crimes or other sexual misconduct during a six year stretch.
The number of actual cases may be higher because not every state has a process for banning officers and the ones that do don’t always prosecute the officers for their conduct.
Holtzclaw case began when a woman accused him of forcing her to perform sexual acts on him during a traffic stop. After the initial incident, dozens of accounts began to surfaces about Holtzclaw sexualy assaulting women in the neighborhood he patrolled.
The case turned dark when the 17 year old he sexually assaulted testified during the trial that Holtzclaw raped her on her front porch after following her in his patrol car. This accusation held true when Holtzclaw’s DNA was found in the victims pants.
It’s absolutely disgusting how deep this case went and the conduct of this officer was inhumane. If we can learn anything from incidents like these, it’s that police departments need to get a better control of their officers. Because the public image of officers has became so sour after the incidents in Ferguson, Missouri and the case of Freddie Gray, among others. So this is the last thing that American police forces needed, another inhumane incident when people fail to do their job.
Courtesy of Wikimedia
