In outlining his public safety agenda, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has stated that “police have a critical role to play” and that his proposed use of alternatives to policing will let NYPD re-prioritize, “allowing police officers to focus on violent crimes.”  Nowhere is re-prioritization nee ded more urgently than around NYPD’s long-beleaguered Special Victims Unit (SVU). Ask ordinary New Yorkers if SVU’s work — apprehending rapists, sexual predators, and child abusers — is important, and you’ll hear a chorus of support. And yet, despite our well-resourced police department, SVU remains desperately understaffed, insufficiently trained, and burdened with inexperienced investigators. The results are predictable: re-traumatized rape victims, children unprotected, and predators left free to re-offend. In one case, an NYPD detective demeaned a rape survivor and closed her case with no investigation. The rapist went on to attack three other women, the third of whom was strangled unconscious before being sexually assaulted. In protests, interviews, and public hearings, survivors have spoken out about inexcusable negligence and sexism in rape investigations. “It’s mind-blowing to say this, but my experience after the assault is almost as bad as the actual assault,” a rape survivor told Spectrum News NY1. Her NYPD detective treated her with “disinterest,” then neglected to examine the crime scene, failed to interview crucial witnesses, and never conducted a proper background investigation of the perpetrator, who remains at large. Over the past decade, numerous survivors have demanded reform, as have advocates, journalists, and City Council members. The city’s own Department of Investigation, in a devastating 2018 report on SVU, documented severe staffing shortages, rape cases assigned to “white shields” (officers with no detective badge and no detective experience), and botched investigations. At a 2021 City Council hearing organized by Councilmember Helen Rosenthal, survivors described detectives who belittled them, rapes that went uninvestigated, and rapists not held accountable. Councilmember Adrienne Adams called the findings “appalling.”  The U.S. Department of Justice agreed. In 2022, in response to pleas from survivors and advocates, DOJ opened an investigation of NYPD, recognizing that an abject failure to take sexual assault seriously is a civil rights violation against women, who are disproportionately targeted for sexual assault, then re-victimized by sexist attitudes that allow detectives to give their cases short shrift. That DOJ investigation continues. Shamefully, one mayor after another has failed to address the problem. Mike Bloomberg ignored a working group’s recommendation that SVU staffing be vastly increased. Bill de Blasio allowed retaliation against SVU’s respected commanding officer who refused to stonewall DOI, replacing him with a commanding officer with no detective experience. Eric Adams filled top public safety posts with men who were themselves implicated in serious misconduct against women, driving out a conscientious police commissioner who was taking SVU’s problems seriously. Each of these mayors left SVU cripplingly understaffed. On each of their watches, serial sex offenders who could have been stopped were instead permitted to re-offend, inflicting life-changing harm, or worse, mostly on women and children. Will Mamdani continue this disgraceful trend? Or will he instead, as a progressive, recognize that real progress for public safety requires him to end this ongoing injustice? Advocates for survivors were not encouraged by seeing that the Mamdani transition committees on community safety and criminal justice include almost no one with expertise in gender-based violence. But advocates and survivors remain hopeful. Nothing could be more consistent with a progressive vision of criminal justice than the idea that women and children should receive a fair share of public safety resources. That rape and child abuse, among the most violent, predatory, and harmful crimes, should be investigated skillfully. That a police department of 35,000, which assigns fewer than 300 investigators to handle all sexual assault and child abuse cases for all five boroughs, is not living up to the promise of equal justice for all.  In a press conference during his visit to the White House, Mamdani said of the NYPD: “What we need to do is make sure they can focus on serious crime.” Few crimes are as serious as rape. No category of crime in New York is more disgracefully underresourced. Mamdani has an opportunity to impress progressives and conservatives alike by righting an injustice that for too long has made our city less safe and less just. By meeting with survivors and their advocates, then acting on what he will learn from them, he can become the mayor who finally gives New Yorkers the Special Victims Unit we deserve.  Manning is director of Women’s Equal Justice, which serves survivors of sexual assault. ...read more read less