Council panel backs changes to rape squad

Sex-crimes officers should be more responsive and better trained, the Public Safety Committee report said.

By Clea Benson
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

A City Council committee yesterday called for sweeping change in the police sex-crimes unit, saying the department and Mayor-elect John F. Street should make sure investigators are "committed to proper treatment of sexual assault victims" and are "free of victim-blaming biases."

The Public Safety Committee said investigators should get extensive training and continuing education in how to interview women and assess their credibility, and in the "realities and myths associated with rape."

The panel also said investigators should be required to keep victims informed about their cases, and in particular to tell them if their complaints are dismissed as "unfounded" or put in noncriminal categories, a common practice in the past.

The eight-member committee made the proposals a week after holding a daylong hearing on the department's handling of sexual assault. The hearing was prompted by an Inquirer series, published in October, which disclosed that police had kept thousands of sexual-assault complaints out of the city's crime statistics for much of the last two decades, sometimes failing to investigate them.

The recommendations, passed unanimously by the committee, will go before the full Council on Thursday. They are likely to be approved and will be forwarded to Street, who takes office Jan. 3.

During five hours of testimony last week, women's advocates and rape counselors portrayed a police culture that was often skeptical of victims and insensitive to their needs.

The department and Street, the committee said, should ensure that "officers and detectives in the unit are interested in the work of the unit, committed to proper treatment of sexual assault victims and handling of investigations, are properly trained, and free of victim-blaming biases which impair proper investigation."

The committee said another priority should be finding a comfortable, central location for the unit, now housed in the Frankford Arsenal, an imposing former military complex remote from Center City, where alleged offenders are held across the hall from the room in which victims are interviewed.

The committee said it would continue to monitor the sex-crimes unit - officially the Special Victims Unit - and it requested a progress report from the Street administration no later than March 30.

Street did not respond yesterday to a request for comment.

Police Commissioner John F. Timoney said through a spokesman that he had no comment.

Timoney testified last week that the sex-crimes unit had "for years and years" improperly categorized some of its cases, including some rapes that were never investigated.

Timoney, who took over the department in March 1998, has added staff to the unit and has ordered a review of about 5,000 cases that were deemed "unfounded" or given noncriminal classifications such as "investigation of person" over the last five years. Timoney has promised a report to Council.

The committee called on the department to scrutinize "unfounded" cases from 1997 and 1998 and reinvestigate those that were improperly dismissed.

Under Timoney, police have rejected far fewer complaints as "unfounded" - or groundless - than in the past. The commissioner, who requires two supervisors to approve when a complaint is deemed groundless, released statistics last week showing that the percentage of rape complaints classified that way had fallen from 18 percent in 1998 to about 8 percent in the first 11 months of this year.

Councilman Angel L. Ortiz, chairman of the Public Safety Committee, said yesterday that he believed Timoney was dedicated to fixing the sex-crimes unit.

"I am satisfied that Commissioner Timoney is committed to resolving the issue," Ortiz said. "He has to change the culture. He has to be able to establish a system in which the mythologies and the views that have existed for decades are removed."

In other recommendations, the committee suggested that the Street administration and the Police Department look into creating a separate, centralized unit in which police and social workers would work jointly to aid children who are physically or sexually abused.

Currently, police and child-welfare authorities pursue separate investigations.

Such joint centers, for which Timoney has expressed support, are in use in other cities. Advocates say they eliminate the need for traumatized children to tell their stories many times to different authorities.

The Council committee also recommended that the department permit advocates from Women Organized Against Rape to accompany sexual-assault victims through the processing of their complaints.

Officers who do not treat victims well should be disciplined, the report said.

Women's advocates testified at the hearing that investigators often viewed victims with suspicion and focused on their past acquaintance with attackers or their substance-abuse problems.

The committee said training should be improved to include information on appropriate techniques for interviewing victims and for investigating cases in which the victims are prostitutes, were unconscious or drugged during the assaults, or have mental-health problems.

Training should also include information on "the realities and myths associated with rape, including the proportion of perpetrators who are acquainted with the victim, the role of alcohol and drugs, and the trauma during the rape and the aftermath," the report said.

Carol Tracy, executive director of the nonprofit Women's Law Project, who testified at last week's hearing, said yesterday that the recommendations were a positive step. She said women's groups planned to reach out to the Street administration to discuss the issue.

"I think we have a lot of work to do, but I think that we're on the right path," Tracy said. "I think it's critical to keep the public informed, and I think that's the most important role that City Council can play."