Nurse of the Week: Forensic Nurse Michael King is New Head of NYC Sex Crimes Unit

Nurse of the Week Michael King has been dedicated to both nursing and the law for 15 years. His latest challenge—as Commander of the New York City Police Department’s Special Victims Division—calls for him to draw upon both of his professions.

The Jamaican-born officer/RN emigrated to New York at the age of 16, and enrolled in an emergency medical technician program after he entered college. After four years of training paramedics, King joined the NYPD as a beat cop in 2000. As a rookie policeman, he attended nursing school and worked in city hospitals during his off hours. By 2005 he was a licensed RN. King eventually became a forensic nurse, and spent his off-duty time as a coordinator at the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center’s sexual assault response team. Meanwhile, he pursued his NYPD career as an investigator, a crime scene commander, and later as the executive officer of the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

John Miller, the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism, who recommended King for the Special Victims command, says “If we didn’t have Mike King, I am not sure we could have invented him. At SVU he can combine his experiences of helping people in trauma, his knowledge of science, forensics and investigation and his sense of justice in a way no one else — at least no one else I know — could.”

King’s understanding of the close relationship between forensic nurses and police sex crime units makes him keenly aware of both the wide picture and the details behind the operation of an SVU. He also has first-hand experience with rape kits from his stints as a nurse at hospitals in Long Island and Brooklyn. King says his team uses a “science-based technique that encompasses compassion, sensitivity, and the knowledge of psychological trauma.” He wants to extend training in this area toi patrol officers as well, as “they are usually the first ones at a scene to interview a survivor of sexual assault.”

For an interview with Michael King, see this video at PIX11. More details on King’s background and career are available in this story from AM New York.

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Koren Thomas

Associate Editor at DailyNurse

Koren Thomas (pictured with Assistant) was the associate editor of DailyNurse from late 2019 through July, 2022—and she was not joking about the "issue postage stamps saluting US nurses" idea. Send your article ideas, submissions, Nurse of the Week suggestions, comments, and corrections to the current Editor in Chief at [email protected].