OK Cop Charged with Sexual Assault of 8 Women Gets to Go Home

Daniel Ken Holtzclaw, the Oklahoma City police officer who has been charged with sexually assaulting at least eight women, all of whom were African American, while on duty was released yesterday on $500,000 bond after the bond was dropped from $5 million. He is under house arrest.

Holtzclaw is facing 16 felony counts including first-degree rape, sexual battery, indecent exposure, stalking, forcible oral sodomy and burglary. He focused on particularly vulnerable and marginalized members of society, allegedly targeting poor black women with criminal records between the ages of 34 and 58, researching them beforehand and tracking them down. Holtzclaw is on paid administrative leave from the Oklahoma City Police Department. The conditions of his house arrest dictate that he can only leave to travel to court and his lawyer’s office. He also had to turn in his gun and badge and other police gear. And of course, he is prohibited from contacting his victims.

There was a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds for his legal defense, but GoFundMe yanked it down after some complaints. As Nicole Flatow at Think Progress points out, this is an interesting/ridiculous move seeing as they refused to take down the GoFundMe page for Darren Wilson, the officer who killed Mike Brown.

Holtzclaw has denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty. The man is facing a life sentence on just ONE of his sixteen charges and gets house arrest—are you fucking kidding me? It looks like his targeting of vulnerable women who have everything to lose and little to gain by standing up to a police officer who assaulted them—and spoke out anyway—is working in his favor.