Oklahoma NAACP wants alleged assaults by Oklahoma City police officer investigated as hate crime

The president of the Oklahoma NAACP wants the U.S. attorney general to open a hate crimes and civil rights investigation into alleged sexual assaults on Black women by an Oklahoma City police officer.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the Oklahoma NAACP president Anthony Douglas requested the investigation, which details the allegations against Oklahoma police officer Daniel Holtzclaw.

Holtzclaw, 27, was arrested on Aug. 21 and accused of groping and raping several Black women from February through June while on duty patrolling the city’s northeast side.

Police have said there are at least eight alleged victims.

According the Associated Press, in the letter to Holder, Douglas wrote that details of the allegations against Holtzclaw “raise potentially serious concerns, particularly because it may be part of a continuing pattern of police brutality, misconduct, corruption and the use of excessive force and the use of deadly force by this police officer against unarmed African Americans.”

Douglas said in the letter that he applauded Oklahoma City police for investigating and arresting Holtzclaw, but hopes federal officials will expand the investigation and look at its civil rights ramifications.

He also urged the officials to not only look at Holtzclaw’s case but also into “the potential for any pattern or practice of police misconduct by the Oklahoma City Police Department.”

Holtzclaw was charged with 16 felonies, including two counts of first-degree rape, four counts of sexual battery, four counts of forcible oral sodomy, four counts of indecent exposure, one count of first-degree burglary and one count of stalking. He is on house arrest after being released on bail.

Source: MSN, UTSandiego