For the first time, Timoney said yesterday, the department will dispatch an entire group of new detectives to a single unit. He plans to make the move when a new round of detective promotions are announced during the next few weeks.

Traditionally, officers who have passed the detective's exam receive a week of training at the Police Academy and are detailed to one of six detective divisions throughout the city.

Instead, the next class will serve a stint in the Special Victims Unit - a week or longer - learning how to deal with victims of sexual assault and helping to clear a backlog of old cases that Timoney recently ordered reviewed.

"We are going to use the Special Victims Unit as the equivalent of field training," Timoney said. He did not say how many of the new detectives would be permanently assigned to the rape squad.

Also yesterday, City Council President Anna C. Verna cleared the way for public hearings on the performance of the sex-crimes unit. Verna routed a resolution calling for hearings directly to the Council committee that oversees police.

Her decision means that Councilman Angel Ortiz, the resolution's sponsor and chairman of the committee, can now schedule hearings. Earlier, a majority of Council's 16 members had expressed support for hearings.

Ortiz said the sessions likely would take place early next month.

"It's wonderful," said Barbara Burgos DiTullio, president of the state chapter of the National Organization for Women. "It will help the women of the city to feel more confident that something is happening."

Timoney, who took over the department in the spring of 1998, inherited problems and is "trying to put something right that's been askew," she said.

"I hope [police] take this as a positive thing, that this can help them get the resources that they need to do their job," DiTullio said.

Susan Frietsche, an attorney with the nonprofit Women's Law Project, which lobbied Ortiz for hearings, said: "The challenge is to find a solution that lasts. This is not the first time in the city's history that women have had problems being taken seriously when they report these appalling crimes."

Carole Johnson, executive director of Women Organized Against Rape, urged that hearings be held as soon as possible.

In articles published Oct. 17 and 18, The Inquirer reported that the rape squad, established in 1981, dumped thousands of sexual-assault complaints - nearly a third of its caseload - into a bureaucratic catchall known as Code 2701, "investigation of person."

Cases buried in that fashion got little or no investigation, The Inquirer found. The practice was never released to the victims or the public.

Ortiz's resolution cites the newspaper's findings in detail.

The resolution calls on Council to look into the unit's practice of putting sexual-assault complaints in noncriminal classifications, such as "investigation of person," where the complaints do not appear in the city's crime tally.

It also calls for examining why the Police Department last year dismissed 18 percent of all rape complaints as "unfounded" - groundless. That rejection rate was the highest among the nation's 10 largest cities.

The resolution says the hearings also will consider whether the Special Victims Unit's headquarters should be moved from its current location, on the grounds of the old Frankford Arsenal. Victims and their advocates have complained that the site is remote and the unit's offices are dingy and forbidding.

The resolution says the hearings should include testimony from the Police Department, the FBI, "and other criminal-justice system experts, advocacy groups and citizens on how these crimes should be handled in the city of Philadelphia."

In its early years, the rape squad operated with two-member investigative teams, but police say its staffing was continually cut.

In recent years, the squad's caseload has boomed - from 3,500 cases in 1997 to a projected 5,000 this year.

While Timoney added nine detectives to the unit for the first time a year ago - bringing its total staff to about 70 - its investigators say they are still heavily burdened.

Earlier this year, a sergeant in the unit, James Offner, told a group of WOAR volunteers: "We don't have the resources to investigate to the level that we would like."

On occasion, he said, an investigator might suspect a child had been sexually abused but could not persuade the youngster to open up in an initial interview. The investigator would have little or no time to follow up.

"We put down that, 'The child made no statement,' and move on," Offner said. "Because the line is long. We have to go on."

A week ago, Timoney met with women's advocates and promised, among other things, an extensive review of sexual-assault complaints that may have been buried by investigators.

He said yesterday that the review was still under way and that he could not yet quantify how many cases might have been classified improperly.

Referring to the mix of personnel in the unit, Timoney said: "The long-term objective is to have veteran detective investigators in there."

When the unit was created, it was staffed solely with patrol officers, who are paid less than detectives.

In an interview earlier this year, Timoney said: "Bringing seasoned detectives into the sex-crimes squad would elevate it. . . . In a police environment, whether you like it or not . . . detectives are viewed as the cat's meow."

There are about 800 detectives citywide.