Crimes Uncounted
How Philadelphia police his rape complaints
Sidebar to the second of two parts

Rape squad office? 'It's sort of scary'

The Special Victims Unit is in the old Frankford Arsenal. Some say
its condition is regrettable. Timoney called the site suitable.

By Craig R. McCoy,
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Part 1: Women victimized twice in police game of numbers
Part 2: How police use a new code when sex cases are 'unclear'
Police used 'throwaway categories' since 1960s
After FBI questioned one tactic, another was found

The offices of the Special Victims Unit have been anything but special.

For the rape squad's first decade, its home was a crumbling, granite former schoolhouse in the Port Richmond section. The heating system was so inadequate that one captain remembers typing reports while wearing gloves.

When that building was shut for asbestos removal, the squad moved to a rundown former park police headquarters in South Philadelphia. The horses were gone from the stables in the rear, but flies and the odor of manure lingered.

For the last five years, Special Victims has operated from a yellow-brick building at the old Frankford Arsenal. The unit's headquarters - Building 110 - sits in a mazelike complex ringed by stone walls topped with barbed wire.

"As soon as you pull in the place, you're scared," said a 23-year-old Northeast Philadelphia woman who went there in January to tell police that a former boyfriend had sexually assaulted her.

Police Commissioner John F. Timoney barred reporters from touring the squad's offices, saying their presence might disturb victims.

Many district station houses and other Police Department facilities are badly deteriorated, the result of years of neglect and tight budgets. The condition of the Special Victims office is particularly regrettable, say prosecutors, rape-crisis counselors and some police officers.

With its poorly lit parking lot, freight elevator and dingy interior, Building 110 sends a bad message about the department's commitment to rape victims, they say.

"For a lot of people," said Naomi Singer, a former crisis counselor for Women Organized Against Rape, "it's sort of scary."

Timoney, through a spokeswoman, said he thought the location suitable. He described the former arsenal as "a business campus" and said the location "offers privacy to complainants." Timoney said "improvements to the interior have been made and are ongoing."

The Northeast Philadelphia woman said she and her mother drove to the Arsenal Business Center, at Tacony and Bridge Streets, in January, following a patrol car that led them through the grounds.

The officer rode with them up the creaky elevator to the sex-crimes unit.

"That elevator," the 23-year-old woman said. "I felt like I was in a prison elevator."

The officer ushered them into a waiting room "smaller than my bathroom," the woman said. She and her mother waited, sitting on mismatched chairs, staring at the graffiti-covered walls. (Police said they had since been repainted).

The victim's mother, 44, said: "The only thing to look at were phone numbers scribbled on the walls. Graffiti, nitty-gritty messages about guys - that is all there is. Not a box of tissues, not a 1960 McCall's."

"It was very upsetting,' " said the victim. "You know, 'Just get me out of here.' "

Timoney said there were no plans to find a new location.