WASHINGTON — Montgomery County police are defending their handling of sexual assault cases following an article in BuzzFeed regarding reported rapes being labeled as “unfounded” by police investigators.
In its September report, which analyzed FBI statistics, BuzzFeed claimed a number of law enforcement agencies nationwide have an “alarming record of dismissing rape cases,” marking an “extraordinary percentage of rape allegations” as unfounded.
Between 2009 and 2014, Montgomery County police classified 24 percent of its sexual assault cases as unfounded, while the national average is around 7 percent, according to BuzzFeed.
However, the county’s police chief Tom Manger said the article mischaracterized how investigations are conducted.
“It left the reader with the impression that an unfounded case equals a deficient investigation,” Manger told the county council’s public safety committee Monday. “All unfounded cases are fully investigated.”
Noting the public’s concern, Manger said the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office would hire additional staff and play a larger role in reviewing future cases that are classified as unfounded to make sure nothing is missed.
The term “unfounded,” which comes from the FBI, means one of two things: either a report does not meet the legal definition of a sexual assault, or the victim provided false information, officials said. Whatever the case may be, police officials assured committee members that a complete investigation is always carried out.
“We let the victim pretty much run our investigations because this is something that has happened to him or her, not to one of my detectives or to one of our police officers,” said detective Jordan Satinsky with the police department’s special victims investigation division.
“Every case that comes in, we investigate,” he told the committee. “We don’t prejudge anybody.”
