Sheriff says rape kits are irrelevant because most rape accusations are false

I wonder if this Sheriff extends that presumption of innocence to all the crimes he investigates.

16 Likes

We’re sticking ourselves on top of the fridge to get perfectly stale for your return.

16 Likes

Hopefully they don’t handle it the way they handled drug testing.

6 Likes

“All these reports about officers abusing their authority? I’ve investigated a lot of them, and they’re always a load of hooey. My ex-wife tried to get a protection-from-abuse order on me – so I know they’re all a bunch of hogwash as well!”

11 Likes

The Pro Publica article is devastating. Thank you for posting it.

5 Likes

There’s a podcast about it too where they interview a lot of the parties involved and its just heart breaking. Even AFTER it was proven to be true people still held her accountable for “how she acted” said she had to “take responsibility” for her attitude. Absolutely terrifying.

13 Likes

I’m pretty sure that this is what happens when people who aren’t destiny’s golden boy and don’t live in a world of pure narrative causality take Obi-wan’s advice and act on instinct rather than trusting their lying eyes. I’d be shocked if he even has a cargo-cult version of empirical evidence to point to.

2 Likes

I think This American Life covered this and was very forgiving of the people who didn’t believe her. You know, it’s just so easy to not believe someone. Of course when people call in that their car has been stolen police don’t respond with, “Are you sure it was stolen? did you misplace it? this is just an insurance scam isn’t it?” even though falsely reported car thefts are more common than falsely reported rapes. People don’t respond to home invasion stories by scrutinizing the details to look for inconsistencies even though home invasions are very rare.

The idea that an 18-year-old girl ought to be held accountable for the way she acted after being raped is so obviously crazy that anyone presenting that idea obviously has some kind of dedicated “consider rape accusations” circuit that doesn’t run through “compassion” or “reason.” What would we expect of the behaviour of an 18-year-old who had escaped from a war zone, or seen a close friend murdered? I really wish I could reach through my computer screen and throttle someone over that case.

21 Likes

I know, it can feel pretty great, but why would I call the pigs to tell them about my consensual sex.
Idaho must be a very strange place.

8 Likes

Idaho is trying a new model of community-police engagement where police investigate crimes and prosecute offenders, but also investigate awesome things to verify they happened and then give you a giant high-five if they are true.

(Of course women a history of dressing conservatively and turning down dates have a very hard time having their stories of consensual sex believed, hence the tests)

7 Likes

With a H/T to @anon50609448, This American Life, Episode 581: Anatomy of Doubt. Definitely worth a listen.

And my first thoughts when seeing this headline: Please don’t be from Florida, please don’t be from Florida, please don’t be from Florida…

8 Likes

They have always been there in law enforcement. (It’s pretty much the traditionally accepted position in law enforcement that most rape accusations are false, which rather explains the total lack of seriousness with which it’s been treated by LEOs.) It’s just that the tools now exist for them to reveal themselves as such more easily.

6 Likes

Yea, but their method seems not entirely rigorous.
After all, over half of the contestants receive the high fives without even having to undergo any testing.

Perfectly stale peeps are the bestest peeps – all crunchy with just a wee bit of chewiness.

5 Likes

That’s the one! It’s heart breaking. That girl has more fortitude than most women I know, myself included! She did everything right! And even at the end she was able to go back and let these assholes apologize and forgive them. Seriously. Where is her fucking kick-starter?

7 Likes

Police labs shouldn’t be able to test “drug” samples until they’ve tested all the rape kits - backlogs in some places are appalling.

(And of course, police shouldn’t be able to hold people in jail on drug charges until they’ve gotten their “drug” samples tested by real labs, not just the notoriously unreliable field test kits.)

6 Likes

Meanwhile on Oregon…

As i said upthread this is not new. :confused:

6 Likes

It’s because of stupid liars that assholes like this exist and my kids got hurt because a rapist wasn’t put in jail. ~Teraisa

1 Like

is it okay to wish I could feed this pig to the pigs?

Yeah. I definitely wanna feed this pig to the pigs.

6 Likes

8 Likes