via Wikimedia
Neil David Kimball was a Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigator assigned to work on senstive sexual abuse crimes. Since 2013, he’d investigated dozens of cases on the sex crimes unit… until he was exposed as one of the very perpetrators he was supposed to be going after.
Kimball “befriended” a 15-year-old girl after she reported being victim of an assault, and what did he do to her? The very thing that she’d reported.
The details of the assault are heinous, but since Kimball got a plea deal, he’s only going to serve 3 years. THREE.
His department had even been WARNED about him. The Los Angeles Times noted that “In 2009… a woman told the Sheriff’s Department that Kimball, while on duty, had grabbed her hand and tried to make her touch his genitals.” Who knows how many others were abused by him!
There’s a lot of people doing way more time for non-violent offenses than this cop will do for sexually assaulting a child. Recently, researchers from Bowling Green University found police officers in the U.S. were charged with forcible rape 405 (reported) times between 2005 and 2013.
Police like Neil David Kimball who abuse are in a unique position to harm Black women and girls, who experience this sort of violence at disproportionate rates. Police shouldn’t be using their power to terrorize and exploit trauma throughout the community.