SVU started in 1999, Olivia Benson, played by Mariska Hargitay, was an empathetic detective working her way through the intricate New York Special Victims Unit.

Before he became the face of Oxygen’s "New York Homicide," Robert Boyce spent decades in the NYPD, joining the force in 1983 as a 28-year-old recruit stationed on the Upper West Side’s 24th Precinct.

New Sgt. Kerline Desir was the youngest of the group, at 35, but more to the point of the occasion, she became the first Haitian American woman to be sworn in as a superior officer in the Boston ...