Arrests in rapes up 46% in 1999

Reported cases were up 24%. Philadelphia police say they have been taking the crime more seriously.

By Mark Fazlollah,
Craig R. McCoy
and Robert Moran
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

Better stats, more arrests

After years of discarding sexual-assault complaints en masse, Philadelphia police are investigating rapes much more aggressively and making many more arrests.

They are also classifying rape cases as just that - rapes.

Arrests of alleged rapists in the city increased nearly 50 percent in 1999, according to newly released crime data. The trend has accelerated this year, with rape arrests jumping nearly 80 percent, compared with the same period in 1999.

The police sex-crimes unit is collaring so many more suspects that the Philadelphia courts have expanded their hours for hearing rape cases.

The 1999 crime data, released last week by Police Commissioner John F. Timoney, show that police counted 934 rapes last year - 24 percent more than in 1998.

Through March 2 of this year, rape reports were up 14 percent over the same period a year earlier.

The new numbers show how the rape squad is changing in response to media scrutiny, pressure from women's groups, and Timoney's stated determination to restore public confidence in the department's handling of sex crimes.

"It appears that these cases are now being treated as serious crimes," said Carol E. Tracy, executive director of the nonprofit Women's Law Project in Philadelphia. "They are being given the kind of treatment they deserve."

Police commanders say the spike in the number of rape cases stems from proper incident reporting, not a surge in sexual assault. Simply put, police investigators are not fudging the numbers the way they once did - hiding complaints in administrative categories such as "investigation of person" or dismissing them as "unfounded."

The statistics give fresh evidence of just how many cases were dumped in past years.

"Rape up 24 percent?" said City Councilman Angel L. Ortiz, head of the Public Safety Committee, which held hearings on the sex-crimes unit in December. "This is incredible."

As detailed in Inquirer articles published since October, the sex-crimes unit mishandled thousands of cases over the last two decades. Women's complaints were deliberately misclassified and mothballed after little or no investigation.

From its inception in 1981 until 1998, the unit shelved about a third of its caseload in this fashion. The victims were never told what happened.

Timoney, who became police commissioner in early 1998, installed a new commander of the squad late that year and renamed it the Special Victims Unit. For the first time, detectives were assigned. Previously, the unit was staffed exclusively by patrol officers.

The Inquirer articles prompted Council hearings and demands for change from women's groups. Timoney added supervisors to the unit, beefed up training, equipped detectives with computers, and approved increased overtime so they could work cases around the clock.

The commissioner also ordered a massive reinvestigation of more than 2,000 sexual-assault cases that had been set aside by investigators over the last five years. In December, 45 detectives were dispatched to the unit to reopen old files, contact victims and search for suspects in cases dating to 1995 - the statute of limitations for rape. The detectives have made several arrests.

"It's a huge crisis of confidence in the area of Special Victims," Timoney said in an interview last week. "So we need to address that."

With the unit under the spotlight, its performance has changed significantly.

In 1999, sex-crimes investigators arrested 501 suspects on rape charges - up from 343 the previous year, a 46 percent increase. In no other category of crime did arrests jump that dramatically.

From Jan. 1 through March 2 of this year, detectives made 118 rape arrests, compared with 66 during the same period in 1999, a 79 percent increase.

Shawn Nolan, a public defender who represents rape defendants, said he had seen a steady increase in the number of sexual-assault suspects being brought to the Criminal Justice Center for hearings.

The same thing has happened in the juvenile court system, where cases involving suspects below the age of 18 are heard.

"They've just skyrocketed," said Robert L. Listenbee Jr., chief of the juvenile unit of the Public Defender's Office.

The increase in arrests has come in tandem with another change at the sex-crimes unit - investigators are giving credence to women much more frequently than in the past.

The proportion of rape complaints rejected as "unfounded" - fabricated - has dropped sharply.

In 1998, the sex-crimes unit classified as "unfounded" 18 percent of the rape complaints it received - the highest rejection rate among the 10 largest American cities.

In the first half of 1999, the unfounded rate dropped to 8 percent, department data show. A review of figures for the second half of last year indicates that the unfounded rate continued to fall.

Penny Harrington, former police chief of Portland, Ore., and now director of the National Center for Women in Policing, expressed satisfaction at the change. She had previously been critical of the unit's high unfounded rate.

"It all goes back to these myths that we have in society," Harrington said. "There's just this disbelief. Police have reasons for why a woman shouldn't have done what she did. They say, 'Well, this isn't really a rape.' "

The Police Department has hired Harrington's Los Angeles-based organization to train a group of sex-crimes officers in handling acquaintance rape.

Timoney said last week that the 24 percent increase in Philadelphia rapes in 1999 showed the department's new willingness to take women at their word.

The increase was the largest percentage rise for any major crime.

The rise in rape cases occurred during a period when total crime in Philadelphia was declining and rape was falling nationally.

Timoney said the sex-crimes unit was now classifying as rapes cases that police in many other cities might reject. He said he was referring to rape allegations against acquaintances or boyfriends, cases that do not involve "the traditional, hit-on-the-head, drag-in-the-alleyway" attack by a stranger.

"We needed to go to, literally, from one extreme to the another, to take everything - maybe even over-report," Timoney said, "just to get a sense of where we are and to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks."