Philadelphia Inquirer
Tuesday, July 29, 2003

Johnson calls for rape-case disclosure

The commissioner said he met with the unit that did not report a Fairmount Park rape now linked to a fatal attack.

By Thomas J. Gibbons Jr.,
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

A police sketch of the man sought in two rapes.

Philadelphia police, stung by criticism for not publicizing an April 30 rape of a jogger in Fairmount Park - linked now by DNA to the rape and strangulation of Rebecca Park - said yesterday that all sexual assaults would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis to determine if they should be reported publicly.

A composite sketch of the rapist in the April case, an attack on Kelly Drive at Fountain Green Drive, was drawn from the 21-year-old victim's descriptions but was never distributed to the public. The image resembles a drawing of a man police want to question in the death of Park.

Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson said he met yesterday with the Special Victims Unit to encourage officers to be more forthcoming about sexual assaults.

"I met with them today, and what I basically told them... is any incident that happens, of a major incident, the public should be made aware of it," Johnson said.

The commissioner confirmed yesterday that the department's Special Victims Unit withheld information about the April rape because investigators thought publicity would jeopardize their investigation.

"On this particular case, Public Affairs was not made aware of it," said Johnson, after meeting with officials of the Special Victims Unit. "I don't think anything was done intentionally, but at the same time I'm not trying to justify what they did or did not do... . It should have been done," said Johnson during an interview yesterday in his office at Police Headquarters.

Johnson said police "have no set policy when the news media should be notified, but at the same time, it should be when they feel that the newspeople should be made aware of an incident going on out there - if there is a major incident - the people should be made aware of it."

Park, 30, a fourth-year medical student, was last heard from about 4 p.m. on July 13, when she left her home in the River Park section of West Philadelphia to run along a remote trail in West Fairmount Park. Her partially clad body was discovered four days later, in wooded park lands off the 3500 block of Conshohocken Avenue.

An autopsy determined she had been raped and manually strangled. DNA taken from semen in her body matched that from the knife-wielding man who raped the woman he intercepted as she ran along Kelly Drive.

John Darby, captain of the Special Victims Unit, told reporters on Friday that his officers had notified the police Public Affairs Unit of the April 30 attack. But that statement was disputed almost immediately by the Public Affairs commander, Inspector William Colarulo.

Johnson said yesterday that he had ordered Darby to a meeting in his office, along with senior commanders who oversee Special Victims, to let them know that if it comes to a decision between possibly hurting an investigation and public safety, "I want the public to be notified. I don't want any secrecy."

Johnson characterized the meeting as a discussion with no discipline meted out. "I told them what my concerns were. And in the future... I'd rather the community hear.

"If there's any doubt, I want them to talk to the inspector of Public Affairs," he said. Darby declined to comment last night.

Meanwhile, the police Homicide Division reported no developments yesterday in the hunt for the suspect in both cases, described by police as a Latino man in his late 20s or early 30s. A $6,000 reward has been posted in the investigation - $5,000 from the Philadelphia Daily News, and $1,000 from the Citizens Crime Commission of Delaware Valley, said John Apeldorn, the commission's president.