A new report reveals police sexual violence is widespread, rarely punished and embedded in the very systems survivors are forced to rely on for justice.
Nearly one in five New Yorkers have experienced sexual violence. A new study finds that 12 percent have also faced sexualized behavior from NYPD officers—ranging from unwanted flirting and requests for phone numbers to catcalling.
This isn’t just an issue in the country’s largest city; it’s a national pattern. Across the U.S., police are accused of sexual violence with alarming regularity. After excessive force, it is the second-most common form of civilian complaint—yet just over 2 percent of those complaints result in officer discipline.
A new report on sexual violence in New York City shows that officers who perpetuate sexual violence rarely face consequences (less than 1 percent), arguing that incidents of police sexual violence are not situations of isolated misconduct, but rather part of a pattern of harassment, assault and retaliation by officers.
Of those surveyed, 19 percent of respondents said they had experienced police sexual violence at some point in their life.
Sexual violence perpetrated by police officers in the city is higher in areas with heavy police presence. In highly-policed communities across the five boroughs—areas like Brownsville, Hunts Point, Jamaica and East Harlem—the number of police officers are disproportionately higher than the rest of the city.
Constant police presence becomes a part of people’s daily lives. A significant majority, nearly 75 percent, or survey participants reported going out of their way to avoid interacting with police officers. This includes decisions like not going out at night, avoiding certain blocks and changing routes to avoid officers.
“They [officers] want you to be [scared]. If you’re not scared of them, then it’s like they’re not doing their job right. It’s supposed to be the opposite,” said a 22-year-old Black man from Manhattan.
But solutions do exist. And as cities and states across the country make way for new leadership, advocates for survivors of police violence are hopeful that officers who perpetuate sexual violence can face repercussions like losing their job or being charged with a crime.
Last month, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani took steps in reducing the role that police play in responding to mental health emergencies and unveiled a new office dedicated to community safety: the Office of Community Safety, which will house programs that seek to reduce gun violence, combat hate crimes and and provide resources to survivors of sexual assault.
Reporting numbers are also low—an issue when it comes to all forms of sexual violence, but especially among cases of police violence, says Ileana Méndez-Peñate, a long-time Communities United for Police Reform (CPR) representative and author of the report.
“There is this long history of officer impunity and the lack of accountability we see with officers. So really just making sure that officers are held accountable, that there is independent oversight in the NYPD. People constantly reiterate it. Where can I go? I can’t report police back to police,” says Priscilla Bustamante, an author of the report and Ph.D. candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center. “This issue really shines a light on the fact that police are not really the answer. They’re part of perpetrating the harm. We really have to get at the root cause of sexual violence in our society.”
The numbers are even higher for members of the queer community, according to the study conducted by Communities United for Police Reform and The Public Science Project.
- Thirteen percent of LGBQ+ respondents reported that they have felt targeted by the NYPD because of their sexual orientation.
- For transgender and nonbinary participants, 24 percent reported sexual attention by officers.
Impacts on Highly-Policed Communities: ‘You Live in Fear of Losing Your Life to Law Enforcement’
If you see them following you in a car, you slow down and pray they drive past you.
A Black cisgender survey participant in Queens
Areas with a higher concentration of police officers see higher rates of police violence in distinct ways, creating a culture of fear across communities. Forty percent of people in highly-policed communities report feeling worried most days or every day that friends or family members might be sexually assaulted by officers.
“Constant police presence means you live in fear of losing your life to law enforcement, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You are afraid to venture too far from home after sunset. When you hear a siren, you freeze. If you see them following you in a car, you slow down and pray they drive past you,” said a Black cisgender survey participant from Queens.
Excessive policing in communities of color demonstrates a failure in understanding how serious crimes are racially distributed. Among the drivers that they pull over, officers are more likely to search the cars of people of color but are less likely to find drugs or weapons when compared to white drivers, according to a report by The Sentencing Project.
Despite these stats, year after year, U.S. officers exhibit excessive contact with people of color; Black people are 2.8 percent more likely to be killed by police in the U.S. than white people.
Implications of Gender in Police Departments
In law enforcement agencies across the country, officers arrested for a range of abuses—from alcohol-related crimes to violent crimes to profit-motivated arrests—are predominantly male, according to a study published by the Department of Justice. Over 99 percent of sex-related arrest cases involved male officers. In 2025 alone, police officers in all 50 states were charged with domestic violence.
In 2023, just over 86 percent of law enforcement officers in the U.S. were male, begging the question: What would our systems of policing look like if departments hired more women?
When it comes to personal accounts of police sexual violence with the NYPD, it appears that the issue, while heavily gendered, is embedded in the culture of police departments and policing in general.
Women make up just 12 percent of local police forces, and female officers are more likely than their male counterparts to provide support to victims of domestic violence and are more likely to make an arrest. When it comes to excessive force, male officers are far eight times more likely to have an allegation of excessive force, according to the National Center for Women and Policing.
What Survivors Want
The answer lies in investing in highly-policed communities and eliminating officer impunity, Bustamante and Méndez-Peñate say. There is also a lack of legislation in place to protect survivors of police sexual violence, and the laws that are in place aren’t always strictly enforced.
As of 2020, police misconduct reports in New York are supposed to be available to the public, but it’s been noted that reports disappear on the database, leaving the scope of officer misconduct difficult to evaluate. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, 25 U.S. cities launched civilian oversight committees, including New York City.
Independent oversight of the NYPD does exist. The Civilian Compliant Review Board (CCRB) is in charge of making recommendations for discipline which the NYPD often does not follow.
Of the cases reported to the CCRB, 40 percent never result in the identification of the officer—meaning that they never show up in the database as a threat to the public. On top of this, reported police misconduct has surged in recent years and the CCRB sometimes has to drop cases due to a lack of resources.
Fixing a Cycle of Violence
Bustamante and Méndez-Peñate have found that sexual violence is a key piece of analyzing people’s interactions with police, especially given that those who experience sexual violence at the hands of the police are jarringly likely to experience it again; 40 percent of participants who had experienced police sexual violence experienced it more than once.
The report makes three recommendations based off of the lived experiences of the people Bustamante interviewed: expand NYPD oversight, transparency and accountability; reduce the size and scope of the NYPD; and invest in non-police intervention and survivor support.
“We hope that other municipalities, other cities, start to look at their own police force and the level of police sexual violence that’s happening with highly-policed communities especially,” says Méndez-Peñate.
People want officers to be held to a higher level of accountability, but this isn’t the only answer when it comes to making people feel safe. For Bustamante and Méndez-Peñate, it’s not just about better policing but it’s also about resources—mental health, school and community resources—and providing things that make people feel safe and provide them with a sense of belonging.
Bustamante says that we can get there by listening to survivors of police sexual violence. “It was really great to be able to sit and imagine and dream with survivors. They have a lot of wisdom in terms of how we can create safety despite ongoing police presence and despite ongoing harm, they were finding ways to do that already in community for themselves.”
