Rape U.

"When Shannon Schieber moved into an apartment on a quiet, pretty little street in Philadelphia to pursue a doctorate at the prestigious University of Pennsylvania Wharton Business School nearby, she didn't know that a serial rapist was stalking single women in the area.

"Neither did the police. Eight months later the man broke into her home in the middle of the night, raped the 23-year-old, then choked her to death as she put up a tremendous fight.

"Schieber was his fifth victim. There were to be seven others viciously assaulted after her. But Schieber was the only one he killed, and the police blunders surrounding that case helped expose a scandal.

"It emerged that the Philadelphia police department harboured a culture where rape victims were routinely belittled and their cases ignored by patrol officers and detectives, while predators got away with sexual assault and, literally, murder."

Police enabling serial rapists and murder: why?

One of the city's big weaknesses was tolerating a system where for years detectives had got away with filing rape cases under a non-criminal classification code that was the equivalent of sweeping them under the carpet.

With UAlbany police "chief" J. "Frank" Wiley not referring cases to the Albany County DA, and Wiley and his crew filing false police reports, not giving all cases dispositions, etc., it looks like the UAlbany police share that big weakness.

"New York and Baltimore are examples of cities where policing rape has made some recent progress but still faces significant obstacles, according to various experts. Many other cities hide bad practices behind a lack of oversight at local or federal level."

Baltimore: where "chief" Wiley (who'd never so much as been a security guard in New York) allegedly had been a city police officer for a single year. As for SUNY Police, City of Albany Police, Albany County Sheriff's Office, NYS Troopers, FBI, etc. in general: lack of oversight at every level so far.

"'A police department that has problems and is making mistakes has got to recognise the need to change, and it has to start at the top,' said Charles Ramsey, Philadelphia's police commissioner since 2008 and the president of the Police Executive Research Forum, which aims to spread best practices nationally.

"'If they don't take action, eventually it's going to come to light anyway, resulting in scandals where the police have intentionally misclassified crimes – and you're going to get a victim saying 'there's been no investigation, no follow-up'."

And so it is at UAlbany.

"Some inherently sexist but sometimes mainly exhausted police developed a 'lady, let's get this over with' attitude, Boyle said, which he now describes as 'inexcusable and indefensible' but was routine before the scandal broke – and still is in many departments up and down the country."

"Schieber was heard screaming for help by a neighbour, who called the police.

"They arrived in six minutes, knocked on Schieber's door but, hearing nothing and seeing no signs of forced entry, they left.

"Schieber's father, Sylvester Schieber believes, especially having chewed the case over with federal criminologists, that the attacker intended solely to rape his daughter, but when the patrol officers knocked on the door he strangled her to silence her, then fled out of the balcony door.

"If the officers had known there was a serial rapist prowling the area they would probably have forced their way in and perhaps been able to save the promising young finance student – although she would not have chosen that area to live if the public had been warned, he said.

"'They set Shannon up for murder,' Schieber said.

"The police were initially convinced her murder was a crime of passion by an ex-suitor.

"It took eight months for investigators to link the five neighbourhood cases to one predator and two years and a series of Pulitzer prize-nominated investigations by the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper for the police to admit there was anything more than 'isolated sloppiness' at play, and that comprehensive reform was needed."

Walters, Joanna. "Investigating rape in Philadelphia: how one city's crisis stands to help othersIn the 80s and 90s, police were found to have regularly ignored rape cases. The resulting crisis brought shame to the city – but now the department's transformation is a model for others." The Guardian. July 2, 2013. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/02/rape-philadelphia-investigation-crisis-crimes

Could SUNY Police be said to have been setting students up for abductions, rapes, assaults, suicides? Could the NYS Legislature, which knows of problems yet doesn't bother itself to act?

"there are police chiefs in SUNY who are not mandating policer [sic] officers, certified, whatever. We have police chiefs that refuse to voluntarily give up their fingerprints"

James Lyman, Executive Director of Council 82 for the New York State Law Enforcement Officers Union. (108). http://www.nysenate.gov/files/SUNY%20testimony%20pt.%202.PDF

"SUNY police chiefs serve at the pleasure of the campus president, thus are motivated to keep crime stats down by any means […] SUNY can no longer afford to staff, or overstaff, a body, or overstaff, a body which is subject to inefficiencies, manipulation, cronyism, ill motivation and mismanagement."

Peter Barry, VP & Legislative Director of NYS University Police Officers Union Local 1792 of the American Federation of State County & Municipal Employees AFSCME, Council 82 & AFL-CIO. (127-128). http://www.nysenate.gov/files/SUNY%20Testimony%20pt.%203.PDF