Daniel Holtzclaw and the Dangers of the Classist Divide

Daniel Holtzclaw, former Oklahoma City police officer, is found guilty of multiple rapes. Photo by Sue Ogrocki, published by The New York Times. 

The tendency of law enforcement officials to disproportionately target lower class women can manifest itself in dangerous extremes. Together with the cultural stigma against sex work which governs streetwalker's social mobility, policing bias can foster an unsafe environment for the women it often claims to protect. 

In December of 2015, former Oklahoma City Police Officer Daniel Holtzclaw was found guilty of first-degree rape, sexual battery, indecent exposure, stalking, forcible oral sodomy and burglary. All of his victims were black women with histories of either sex work or drug abuse. (1) During the course of his trial, the prosecution revealed how Holtzclaw used these women's marginalized identities and criminal histories, contrasted against his own positioning, in order to coerce them into sexual acts. Taken from The Oklahoman, published three months after accusations were first raised against Holtzclaw: 

"...Another woman was walking down a street pocked with vacant lots when a police officer pulled to the crumbling curb and asked her for identification. A warrant check turned up a history of drugs and prostitution.

The same routine followed. The officer told the woman to raise her shirt and expose her breasts." (2)

Daniel Holtzclaw believed he could succeed in raping, stalking, and thieving from these women because of their marginalized position in society. As black women living in a lower-class environment, Holtzclaw's victims were also disproportionately likely to incur the police records that made them vulnerable to the officer's advances. While Daniel Holtzclaw serves as an extreme case of the negative effects burdening lower class sex workers, the methodical process behind his actions to target these women reveals a cultural disposition to devalue both the bodies and well-beings of contemporary streetwalkers.