Internal Affairs (Season 15, Episode 4)
Premise: IAB enlists SVU and an undercover Cassidy to expose two patrol officers suspected of raping drunk women and burying the complaints.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 15, Episode 4
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Nick Amaro (Danny Pino), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), Dr. Peter Lindstrom (Bill Irwin)
- Guest stars
- Robert John Burke as IAB Lt. Ed Tucker, David Conrad as Officer West, Nadia Dajani as Officer Ryan Quinn, Marc Menchaca as Officer Michael Groves, Megan West as Tanya Jenkins
- Director
- Jean de Segonzac
- Writers
- Kevin Fox
Summary
“Internal Affairs” opens as Benson’s therapist, Dr. Peter Lindstrom, gives her a gift to replace one held as evidence before he goes away. Cassidy, demoted to court duty in the Bronx, sees fellow officer Mike Groves tased and taken to Bellevue on a psychiatric hold just after Groves hands him a safe-deposit key and says his old precinct, the 12th, is out to get him. Cassidy and Benson have just moved in together. The next day IAB Lt. Ed Tucker asks Cragen for SVU’s help: the 12th’s crime numbers are falling because complaints, sexual assaults among them, are disappearing, and Groves claimed that a woman named Tanya Jenkins had reported a rape that was never recorded.
Tanya, accused last Christmas of hitting a cabbie, now insists she was simply drunk. Officers West and Quinn, who answered the call, say they drove her home. The cabbie checks out, but a camera next door shows West going up to Tanya’s apartment three times that night while Quinn waits, the later trips covered by bogus 911 calls from a payphone that seem to be in Quinn’s voice. Tucker offers Cassidy his detective’s shield back if he goes undercover at the 12th. Partnered with West, Cassidy watches him disappear upstairs with a drunk woman and is treated to a free escort at the end of the shift while Benson listens on the wire.
Rollins then poses as a drunk woman. West and Cassidy take her home, and West tells Cassidy to go first, then pulls him out on a call that never came over the radio. Cassidy’s wire goes dead as West and Quinn drive him toward the river, demand to know what Groves told him and order him to run so they can shoot him and blame a fleeing suspect, but the squad arrives and arrests them. Tanya then reveals that West raped her and came back twice, and that after she went to Groves and his lieutenant, West warned her to keep quiet. Quinn, who has long been devoted to West, turns on him once she hears how he talked about her, and says her lieutenant called to warn her about Cassidy.
Spoiler, the ending: Tucker admits he tipped off the 12th’s lieutenant himself to test how high the corruption went. Cassidy hands over Groves’s key on condition that Groves is freed, and Cragen orders Tucker out of his office. Cragen then tells Benson that he faces mandatory retirement in six months and that Munch, shaken by the Mehcad Carter case, has put in his papers. Cassidy brings Groves home from the hospital, and he tells Benson he hopes Tucker will keep his word about the shield.
Why it stands out
- David Conrad, who plays Officer West, had originally auditioned for the role of Nick Amaro.
- Cragen’s news that he faces mandatory retirement sets up Dann Florek’s exit from the series, which came in January 2014.