Detectives suspect an HIV-positive man is a serial rapist. The case turns personal for Detective Tutuola when he knows the family of one of the victims.
Tropes
- Artistic License – Religion: Malik Harris gets out of a DNA test by claiming he's a Jehovah's Witness. However, Jehovah's Witnesses don't oppose DNA testing. But as Warner explains, it doesn't have to be true - as long as he refuses, she can't take a DNA sample (and they didn't have a warrant).
- Asshole Victim: Tate winds up dying of a drug overdose in part due to Stabler harassing him. While he wasn't the rapist they were tracking, he was still targeting underage girls and wouldn't warn them he had HIV, so it's hard to feel too sad about his death. Fin certainly doesn't.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Leon Tate tortured animals as a kid.
- Batman Gambit: Maybe. When Malik Harris is released due to a lack of DNA evidence, the older brother of one of his victims flies into a rage and attacks him, forcing Malik to bite his shoulder to escape, thereby leaving behind some DNA the detectives can use to nail him later. Cabot suspects that Fin instructed the brother to do this specifically to get the DNA, and Malik's lawyer insists that the incident was a setup, but Fin doesn't confirm or deny it.
- Decoy Protagonist: The episode initially follows Stabler as he tracks Leon Tate. Once Tate dies of an overdose and it becomes clear he wasn't the killer, the episode switches to following Fin instead.
- Grass is Greener: Fin grew up in the city and longed for the quiet of the suburbs. Stabler grew up in the suburbs and wished he was in the city.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Malik Harris is finally caught when he bites the brother of one of his victims after the latter attacks him in a blind(?) rage, leaving his DNA behind in the process.
- Inspector Javert: Stabler flirts with this in regard to Tate. He has a tendency to follow Tate and seems convinced that any rapes in the area were committed by him. In spite of that, it's clear that Tate is still pursuing underage girls and isn't telling them he's HIV positive.
- Missing White Woman Syndrome: Fin gets into an argument with Cragen over this sentiment.Fin: If these girls were murdered in the Village or the Upper West Side, the media would be all over it. 1PP would issue a task force. Five black girls aren't even on their radar.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Stabler is horrified when he realizes Tate isn't the killer they're tracking, realizing they wasted time on the wrong man.
- Never the Obvious Suspect: Tate isn't the killer.
- Police Brutality: Fin deliberately knocks Malik's sunglasses off and stomps on them, apparently for no reason other than petty, personal animus. Subverted as it turns out this is a harebrained, ultimately failed scheme to get Malik's dna entered into evidence.
- Pyromaniac: Nine of Leon Tate's arrests as a child were for arson.
- Serial Killer: Malik Harris has murdered at least four girls in Michigan and two in New York
- Smug Snake: Malik Harris.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- Multiple judges call Cabot out on her and her detectives' schemes to illegally obtain Malik's dna and impose excessive bail on him.
- Cabot goes off on Fin for his final, sucessful scheme to illegally obtain Malik's dna.
