The way to cure this malaise is to shoot for a NYPD that is about half female at all levels.
Op-Ed Columnist - Is Rape Serious? - NYTimes.com When a woman reports a rape, her body is a crime scene. She is typically asked to undress over a large sheet of white paper to collect hairs or fibers, and then her body is examined with an ultraviolet light, photographed and thoroughly swabbed for the rapist’s DNA. It’s a grueling and invasive process that can last four to six hours and produces a “rape kit” — which, it turns out, often sits around for months or years, unopened and untested. Stunningly often, the rape kit isn’t tested at all because it’s not deemed a priority. If it is tested, this happens at such a lackadaisical pace that it may be a year or more before there are results (if expedited, results are technically possible in a week). .... this isn’t justice; it’s indifference. ..... The report found that in Los Angeles County, there were at last count 12,669 rape kits sitting in police storage facilities. More than 450 of these kits had sat around for more than 10 years, and in many cases, the statute of limitations had expired. ..... There are no good national figures, and one measure of the indifference is that no one even bothers to count the number of rape kits sitting around untested. ..... a broad distaste for rape cases as murky, ambiguous and difficult to prosecute, particularly when they involve (as they often do) alcohol or acquaintance rape. ....... “They talk about the victims’ credibility in a way that they don’t talk about the credibility of victims of other crimes” ...... one shining exception: New York City has made a concerted effort over the last decade to test every kit that comes in. The result has been at least 2,000 cold hits in rape cases, and the arrest rate for reported cases of rape in New York City rose from 40 percent to 70 percent ........ Some Americans used to argue that it was impossible to rape an unwilling woman. Few people say that today, or say publicly that a woman “asked for it” if she wore a short skirt. But the refusal to test rape kits seems a throwback to the same antediluvian skepticism about rape as a traumatic crime. Op-Ed Columnist - After Wars, Mass Rapes Persist - NYTimes.com a new foreign policy agenda is emerging around issues like poverty, genocide, climate change and a topic that until recently was hushed up — sexual violence. .......... mass rape as an element of warfare in Congo, Darfur, Bosnia, Rwanda, Liberia — but the lesson here in Liberia in West Africa is that even when the fighting ends, the rape continues ......... the 14-year civil war in Liberia, from 1989 to 2003, when as many as three-fourths of women were raped .......... so many of the girls are pre-teens. ...... the best way to deal with rape — whether in Darfur or Liberia, or even in the United States — is to demystify it, dismantle the taboos, and address it directly ........ Congo and Sudan, where the brutality is particularly appalling ...... even when wars end, mass rape continues by inertia. ...... Liberia’s president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first woman elected a president in Africa, has sent strong signals that rape is intolerable. Well: My Brief Life as a Woman The side effect that surprised me most were the hot flashes — not that I got them, I was expecting that, but by how intense they were. They often woke me in the middle of the night and made me sweat so much that I drenched the sheets. In midwinter I’d walk our miniature poodle, Bijou, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I sometimes felt as if Deb could fry eggs on my chest. (It’s also a bit disconcerting when your hot flashes are fiercer than your wife’s.) ...... certainly under-represented in the arts. Where are the great hot flash novels or movies? How come there’s not a Web site or magazine called “Hot Flash Monthly”? ....... Not only was I temporarily menopausal, but it appeared that I was also turning into a teenage girl from the early 1970s. ........ my six months of hormone therapy ...... my lifelong sense that the world of women is hormonal and mysterious, and that we men don’t have the semblance of a clue. ........ when your significant female other bursts into tears at the drop of a dinner plate or turns on you like a rabid pit bull — whether she’s pregnant, having her period or in the throes of menopause — believe her when she blames it on the hormones.
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