Rape cases in city rise as reporting changes

Figures for the first six months of '99 show a rise of 17 %. Fewer crimes are being shunted into lesser categories.

Police Commissioner John F. Timoney is among those expected to testify at a public hearing on the performance of the sex-crimes unit.

New FBI figures show that reported rapes in Philadelphia increased 17 percent in the first six months of this year compared with the same period in 1998. Nationally, rapes were down 8 percent.

Philadelphia police reported 418 rapes from January to the end of June, compared with 356 during the same period a year earlier, according to an Inquirer analysis of the data, which were released last week.

That 17 percent increase comes on top of a 16 percent rise in reported rapes in 1998.

If the trend holds, the city's crime statistics will show about 850 rapes for all of 1999. That is a jump of nearly one-third from two years ago, when there were 650 reported rapes.

The boom in reported rapes, plus a big increase in aggravated assaults, helped drive up overall crime in Philadelphia 6 percent for the first half of this year - even as crime fell 10 percent nationwide.

The contrast between Philadelphia and the rest of the country does not mean that crime really increased here. Police commanders and criminologists say the numbers are rising because police are not dumping as many crimes from the official count as they once did.

The strongest evidence that the new statistics reflect accurate incident reporting by police, rather than a rise in lawlessness, is that the number of murders in Philadelphia - a count regarded as accurate - continued to drop sharply this year.

"One thing you can't do is hide the bodies," Deputy Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson said yesterday.

Homicides in Philadelphia fell 14 percent in the first six months of the year, continuing a trend that began in early 1998. The city is on track to end the year with fewer than 300 murders - the lowest total since 1985, when there were 271 killings.

Police attribute the continuing decline in homicides to the loosening grip of crack cocaine and a stepped-up police effort against narcotics and gun violence.

Also in the first half of this year, car thefts fell 11 percent, on top of a 13 percent drop in 1998.

Auto-theft figures are also considered generally reliable. Police have traditionally been reluctant to tamper with reports of stolen cars because owners often follow up on the loss and seek police reports for insurance purposes.

Inquirer articles published over the last year have documented that Philadelphia police routinely fudged crime statistics for many years, converting major crimes against people and property to minor ones to make the city appear safer.

In stories published in October, The Inquirer spotlighted the wholesale dumping of sexual-assault cases. From its founding in 1981 until 1998, the police sex-crimes unit deposited nearly one-third of its caseload into a bureaucratic limbo called "investigation of person." Those cases typically got little or no investigation, The Inquirer found. The victims were never told that their complaints had been shelved.

The articles prompted City Council to schedule a public hearing on the performance of the sex-crimes unit. The hearing is scheduled to begin Monday at 10:30 a.m. in the Council chamber on the fourth floor of City Hall. Police Commissioner John F. Timoney, criminologists and representatives of women's groups are among those expected to testify.

Sex-crimes investigators retreated from the wholesale dumping of cases in 1998 after FBI officials noticed that complaints were being parked in noncriminal categories and asked questions. The use of "investigation of person" dropped dramatically that year.

Johnson said yesterday that the shift to more-accurate reporting helped to explain the increase in reported rapes.

Philadelphia's overall crime increase in the first half of 1999 was also paced by a 33 percent increase in aggravated assaults. In the past, police had downgraded large numbers of aggravated assaults to "hospital cases," "disturbances" or other categories that do not show up in FBI statistics.

In addition to rape and aggravated assault, robbery and larceny also increased. The burglary rate was unchanged.

It is impossible to determine how long Philadelphia's crime numbers will continue to climb as Timoney presses for accurate reporting.

In response to the Inquirer's articles on the sex-crimes unit, Timoney ordered detectives to review sexual-assault complaints from the last five years. The effort could lead to renewed investigation of cases that had been dumped and to a revision of rape statistics from past years.

The new FBI statistics show unusual patterns in other areas as well.

Only Detroit and Chicago had higher rates of violent crime than Philadelphia in the first half of 1999.

Yet Philadelphia's rate of property crimes - burglaries, larcenies and car thefts - was one of the lowest of the nation's big cities. Of the 10 largest cities, only San Diego, Los Angeles and New York were lower.