To the Orange County Police Department,
This is geared specifically towards the police officers who interrogated Delaney Robinson on the night of Valentine's Day, last year. This is geared towards the men who stared a rape victim in the eyes and essentially asked grueling questions on what she may have done to deserve to be violated. The trust that may have been placed in you by Delaney Robinson to do your jobs and respect and protect her quickly became misplaced. Delaney did everything that a rape victim can do in order to receive his/her well-deserved justice, and you took that and threw it away. You threw it away by humiliating a girl who will be haunted by what happened that night on February 14th, 2015, and by calling in the perpetuator and giving him a pat on the back and a high-five.
Maybe when you looked at Delaney Robinson and listened to her recall of the events of that night, you must not have thought about the women in your lives, whether it be your wives, daughters, mothers, etc., who also very well could have been in a similar situation. You perhaps didn't take any time to think about Delaney's story when you came home later that night to your wife. It didn't cross your mind when you said "good morning" to your daughter before she left for school the next day. You want what is best for them, though. Your profession requires you to keep them, as citizens of your county, as safe as possible. Though Delaney Robinson is not related to you, it should not be too much to ask for you to take your badge and what it entails seriously and realize that if you would not want the women in your life to endure something so damaging, why should she? To ask a rape victim what they were wearing, or if they were drinking, or their sexual history; you must have known the irrelevance of it all. What you obviously didn't realize was just how selfish and careless it was. Just because you did not know Delaney personally doesn't make her any less of a citizen living in your county, and deserving of equal protection under the law. Consent is consent, and if it isn't there, then it turns into a case that does not deserve a pat on the back or reassurance towards the perpetrator.
You neglecting to take the degree of seriousness of a rape case into account only fuels the disgusting notion still lingering in today's society that rape really isn't a "big deal", and consent doesn't matter if the victim was drunk. You gave into the sick idea that if a woman is under the influence, then she is suddenly the property of someone else. Representing a professional police force, you only let the public know that the invalidation of rape victims and the fact that college athletes are often given the upper hand is alive and well in today's society. Because you neglected to take into full consideration the seriousness of what Delaney went through and did not deserve, you effectively made a local college student and others feel abandoned by both their school and the town in which they reside in.
More than a year later, justice was served when Allen Artis turned himself into the authorities, but I truly feel as though it could have been so much earlier. You were at the forefront of Delaney's safety and making sure that Artis received the proper consequences, but your only advice to him was to keep playing football. You simply cannot be so jaded towards critical cases of sexual violation.
Drunkenness ≠ consent.
