This. And two other things are badly needed.
There needs to be legally mandated protocols for seeking second, and maybe even third and at least one outside the department, opinions in police investigations where decisions about the case are contingent on the expertise of a suspect or person of interest. I don’t expect law enforcement to know everything about technical fields, but it’s a dereliction of their responsibility not to seek outside experts, which in this case would be at least one and preferably two different doctors specializing in the relevant field of medicine. Since cops cannot be trusted to use their discretion in this and departments will hide behind complaints that investigation is hard work and expensive anyways, it simply needs to be made a legal requirement.
And second, there needs to be legal requirements for organizations to report sexual assault allegations to real law enforcement and not their in-house rent-a-cops, with failure to do so being made a crime. Time to stop trusting the foxes to watch the hen houses.
