Chicago PD Face Demands for Changes to How They Handle Sexual Assault Cases
After being sexually assaulted over a year and a half ago, Laurie Empen is now demanding that Chicago provide a special unit dedicated to sexual assaults that too often go unsolved.
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As Chicago police report a surge in reports of sexual assault in the city, with 1,024 reported sexual assaults since the beginning of 2021 and 39 reports occurring in the last week alone, Laurie Empen, a sexual assault survivor, is working to change the way the Chicago Police Department investigates assaults and pushing pushing for CPD to create a special unit dedicated solely to solving sex crimes against adults, reports NBC Chicago. “That means we have detectives (who are) trained and working on only these cases,” she says. “Right now, these detectives are working homicides, shootings and stabbings….and then a sexual assault.”
Empen was sexually assaulted 20 months ago, on October 19, 2019, and no one has been arrested in the case. Empen has contacted the mayor’s office and her alderman. She is hoping others will join her cause by writing to their aldermen, to Mayor Lightfoot’s office and to Police Superintendent David Brown. “I’m not hiding. This should have never happened,” she says. “I’m speaking out for the generations of women who were never believed, who were shamed and ridiculed and nothing was done.” The Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation says many rape cases end with no charges. The group works with assault survivors as they work their way through the criminal justice system.
