Fighting to keep alive a lawsuit against the city, the attorney for the parents of a murdered Wharton School student argued in court yesterday that Philadelphia police discriminated against women in general by deep-sixing complaints of sexual assault.
Attorney David Rudovsky said this discrimination helped set the stage for the strangulation of Shannon Schieber, who was killed at age 23 in 1998 by Troy Graves, the so-called Center City rapist.
Rudovsky asked a federal judge to permit the lawsuit to go to a jury even though a federal appeals court ruled in February that two police officers could not be sued over the murder.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit removed the two police officers as defendants after reviewing their actions on the night Schieber was murdered. Responding to a 911 report of a woman screaming, the two officers pounded on Schieber's door but departed after getting no response. Schieber was found dead inside the next day.
The lawsuit filed by Schieber's parents, Sylvester and Vicki Schieber of Chevy Chase, Md., asserted that the two officers should have knocked down their daughter's door.
An attorney for the city told U.S. District Judge Norma Shapiro yesterday that the lawsuit should now be dismissed.
With the appellate court affirming the officers' conduct, Deputy City Solicitor Jeffrey Scott argued, the "linchpin" of the lawsuit had snapped and the entire case no longer had merit.
Rudovsky argued that police or neighbors might have knocked down Shannon's apartment door had they known that a serial rapist was prowling Center City.
He noted that the Police Department for almost 20 years had a secret policy of classifying as noncrimes up to a third of all complaints from sex-crime victims. The downgrading of sex crimes by the department was first reported by The Inquirer.
Graves pleaded guilty last year to murdering Schieber and sexually assaulting five other Philadelphia women in 1997, 1998 and 1999. Police belatedly admitted that the Sex Crimes Unit had written off as noncrimes the first two of Graves' four attacks before he killed Schieber.
"There was an unconstitutional city policy of downgrading sexual complaints in Philadelphia when this incident occurred," Rudovsky said.
Shapiro issued no ruling yesterday but was caustic about the police practice. She referred to it as "the mishandling of the rape cases, the downgrading of them, the ignoring of them."
Scott rejected Rudovsky's argument as speculative, saying there was no evidence that the officers would have responded differently had they known of Graves' unfolding crime spree.
He argued that Schieber was dead or brain-dead before police arrived - a contention disputed by her parents.
In a legal brief filed before the hearing, Scott also argued that the city was not guilty of discriminating against women because police "downgraded" crimes of all kinds, including those against men.
In court yesterday, Rudovsky summarized this city argument and said: "I'd invite them to argue that to the jury."
