State and local police officers are sworn to serve and protect us. But too often, that is far from what happens -- safety is swapped for fatally excessive violence, corruption, and abuse of power.
And there is a subsection of these behaviors that is as dark as it gets: child sexual abuse.A shocking report from the Washington Post revealed nearly
2,000 law enforcement officers sexually abused children between 2005 and 2022. After being found guilty of their crimes, including
rape, sexual assault, and forcible fondling, nearly half of these officers never saw jail time.Sign the petition demanding an end to child sexual abuse by police officers in the United States!The
report includes so many staggering numbers and statistics like the ones above. But what is truly gut wrenching is the stories connected to those numbers.
A New Orleans police officer sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl while he was driving her to the hospital for a rape kit.A Virginia cop spent months grooming a 15-year-old online before driving to her home, killing her family, and kidnapping her.A North Carolina officer offered to help a 13-year-old runaway. Instead, he got her pregnant.The list goes on and on.
Imagine being a child and blindly trusting a police officer because that is what you've been taught to do…just to have that trust violated in the most despicable, damaging way possible. Their positions of power allow them to gain access to children. Their knowledge of the legal system allows them to lower or evade convictions altogether. And their fellow stewards of the law, from judges to prosecutors to fellow police officials, allow them to avoid true punishment or accountability. And this has all allowed widespread targeting, victimization, and abuse of children by "officers sworn to keep them safe."
Children are left with PTSD, nightmares, and fear of any and all police, and officers are too often left alone, entirely evading justice.Why has this problem been allowed to get so bad? Clearly, our systems of policing and justice within police forces need an entire, immediate overhaul. We cannot continue to allow children's lives and wellbeing to be sacrificed while abusive police officers go unpunished.
Sign the petition demanding state governors conduct exhaustive investigations into their state and local police forces, and enact plans to snuff out this sickeningly pervasive problem.