Panel to examine sex-crimes unit

It will hear reform advocates and the police commissioner speak. The squad has been under fire for dumping cases.

Their topic: What to do about tight staffing and antiquated facilities at the police sex-crimes unit, and about the unit's history of manipulating statistics on sexual assault.

The hearing before Council's Public Safety Committee will put a spotlight on a unit that has been under fire after disclosures that for a decade and a half it dumped nearly a third of its caseload into a bureaucratic twilight zone, distorting the city's crime figures and shortchanging thousands of victims.

The hearing will provide a forum for advocates to argue for improvements in staffing, training and funding for the Special Victims Unit - and for Police Commissioner John F. Timoney to make the case that the squad's problems are in the past.

"We hope, first of all, to find out if and why the Special Victims Unit is classifying a large number of cases into noncriminal categories," said Carol E. Tracy, executive director of the nonprofit Women's Law Project. "I think that, first and foremost, is the critical issue that needs to be explored.

"We also want to feel certain that Special Victims has adequate staff, personnel, training and resources, including facilities, to handle the very large number of cases that come in," Tracy said.

The hearing was prompted by Inquirer articles published in October that reported that the sex-crimes unit had buried thousands of cases between 1981, when it was founded, and late 1997.

In the unit's early years, investigators dismissed an extraordinarily high proportion of rape complaints as "unfounded," essentially saying that the women had fabricated their stories. In the early 1980s, the unit rejected as "unfounded" nearly half the complaints it received - five times the national average.

When that tactic drew scrutiny from FBI auditors, The Inquirer reported, sex-crimes investigators adopted a new subterfuge - depositing large numbers of complaints into an administrative limbo called "investigation of person."

Cases put there did not appear in crime statistics and typically got little or no investigation. The victims usually had no idea their complaints had been buried.

For years, the squad reported solving a higher proportion of rapes than most other big-city police departments. But the claim reflected statistical manipulation rather than investigative skill: The most difficult cases had been "unfounded," shipped to "investigation of person" or otherwise excluded from the official count.

Current and former members of the unit told The Inquirer that inadequate staffing and a steep workload created a powerful temptation to dump cases. The unit's 69 officers are on track to handle 5,000 complaints this year - a workload 13 times that of homicide investigators.

The published revelations prompted a coalition of women's groups, led by the Women's Law Project, to call for hearings before the Public Safety Committee, chaired by at-large Councilman Angel L. Ortiz. The hearing will begin this morning at 10:30 in Room 400 of City Hall.

The list of witnesses includes Timoney and Capt. Joseph M. Mooney, commander of the Special Victims Unit since late 1998.

Timoney has said that problems in the rape squad have been "by and large . . . corrected."

After the Inquirer stories appeared, Timoney ordered an extraordinary review of hundreds of sexual-assault complaints that detectives had either rejected as "unfounded" or had put in noncriminal categories. Council members are expected to ask the commissioner for a report on that review.

Timoney has also announced a plan to send about 45 detectives to the rape squad for a period of training - with some staying on to expand the unit. Those detectives began arriving at the unit Friday.

Deputy Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson said a long-standing problem was that appointments to the rape squad were often "politically motivated." He said that officers with sway in the department had beenrewarded with slots in the plainclothes unit, which has greater prestige and opportunities for overtime than does uniformed patrol duty.

"We just put people there to put them there," Johnson said last week to members of West Philadelphia's Organized Anti-Crime Community Network, a group demanding better treatment for rape victims.

Under Timoney, Johnson said, transfers to the unit have been made on merit.

"We've come a long way . . . and I know we have a long way to go," Johnson said.

At today's hearing, leaders of Women Organized Against Rape are expected to present a victim's perspective on police handling of sexual assault.

Frank Cervone, of the Support Center for Child Advocates, and Chris Kirchner, of the Children's Advocacy Center, are expected to focus their remarks on a proposal to overhaul how sex crimes against children are investigated. Under the proposal - already in use in many cities - sex-crimes investigators and social workers would work under one roof at a new facility.

Currently, about one in 10 child victims is interviewed jointly by police and social workers; advocates say that means that others are forced to tell their stories again and again to different investigators, a process that is hard on the children and may cause their accounts to become distorted.

Also scheduled to testify are Jane A. Siegel, a Widener University professor of criminology, and Michelle Anderson, a law professor at Villanova University. Both are experts on rape.

An issue unrelated to the burying of cases is also expected to come up - the location of the unit's headquarters on the grounds of the old Frankford Arsenal.

The former military compound, now an industrial park, is surrounded by walls topped with barbed wire. Entry is through a security gate, and the Special Victims Unit occupies a dingy brick building within the complex. Victims and their advocates have said that the site is both inconvenient and intimidating.

Ray Alvarez, Ortiz's chief of staff, said the councilman hoped to conclude the hearing by 3:30 or 4 p.m. and then begin an executive session of the committee to discuss recommendations.

"Knowing that we are having the public hearing may help women feel a little more secure, that someone is paying attention, that their claims are being taken seriously," said Barbara Burgos DiTullio, president of the Pennsylvania chapter of the National Organization for Women. "My first hope would be restoring confidence" in the Police Department's response to rape.