Last month the Justice Department released a rather “scathing and damning” report on the City of Baltimore’s Police Department that had—has—to be read to be believed. The report detailed myriad ways that African American residents of the city have their rights routinely violated by police. But the report also provided a glimpse into the treatment of rape victims; more correctly, the treatment of their claims of rape. Many of the women were humiliated by detectives and the investigations into their cases were “deeply flawed.” On Thursday, BuzzFeed published a news analysis of rape reports in Baltimore County. While acknowledging that the City of Baltimore’s rate of investigating rape reports had dropped below the national average, the analysis found that Baltimore County’s rate was the highest in the nation for a police department of its size. According to the analysis, Baltimore County ruled 34 percent of rape reports in 2014 as “unfounded” before they were even investigated:
To understand how and why police toss out rape cases, BuzzFeed News requested detailed case files for “unfounded” rape reports from more than a dozen police departments with high rates of these cases. Most declined, but Baltimore County provided a year’s worth of documents from 2014.
It amounted to a trove of 42 case files. And an analysis found disturbing patterns:
Police routinely did little to no detective work at all, labeling rape reports unfounded after cursory interviews with the victims. Detectives who are trained to handle sex crimes often never even met or spoke with the alleged victim, but instead dismissed the allegation simply after reviewing a case report made by a beat cop. The officers writing the reports often dismissed rape allegations because they believed the women did not fight back hard enough — or, as one police report put it, “did not resist to the best of her ability.” Even if a woman submits to sex against her will because she fears for her life, these reports indicate, her assailant hasn’t committed a crime and can walk away without so much as a police interrogation.