Manhattan City Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal and activist Jane Manning have not been quiet about what they believe are serious failures by the Special Victims Division. After a New York Times article detailed the case of an NYU student who was raped in her dorm room in 2019, reported it to police and was discouraged by SVD officers from going forward, despite fingerprint evidence found in her room. She was also allegedly told that the police couldn’t guarantee her privacy, saying she was, “going to have the news all over you.” She dropped the case. The man identified by those fingerprints went on to attack three more women. They and other advocates sprang into action, staging protests at City Hall with survivors and heroes of the movement, like Gloria Steinem. They say those were just a few things that went wrong in this instance, and they say, so many other instances in a department that us underfunded, understaffed and undertrained. It’s a battle they’ve been fighting for several years. Following a scathing report by the Department of Investigations in 2018 which slammed the department for the very same shortfalls, the city promised to make improvements. Our guests talk about why they believe, though small changes were made, things have not gotten better.