Ignored Rape Claims Revisited

July 11 -- Reports of rape in Philadelphia are up 27 percent this year, but not necessarily because more people are being assaulted.

A review of police files has revealed 2,000 reported sex crimes went uninvestigated during a three-year period, prompting Philadelphia’s police department to change the way it approaches crime complaints by women.

The Philadelphia Inquirer first uncovered the uninvestigated crimes late last year. According to the Inquirer, with the high rate of reported rapes, understaffed members of Philadelphia’s Sex Crime Unit felt pressure to keep the department’s crime numbers low.

Investigative Limbo

So, they ignored thousands of rape complaints, either rejecting them as “unfounded” or categorizing them as non-crimes that required further investigation. This non-crime category, referred to by police in laymen’s terms as “investigation of person” usually meant that many of these cases went in limbo and were never investigated.

“They were put in a category 2701, and generally means it’s a non-crime category,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner John F. Timoney told ABCNEWS. “It would get coded 2701 with the expectation that an investigation would be conducted … Well, it would go into these categories, and some got investigated properly but the vast majority, because they were non-crime, it’s almost like when they [police] never did get around to it. And that went on going back to 1980.”

Wrongdoing AdmittedBased on the newspaper’s investigation, Timoney ordered a review of police files and then acknowledged that the sex crimes unit had improperly handled sex complaints for years. Because of the statute of limitations on the cases, Timoney said, investigators focused on complaints filed between 1995 and 1997. Of the 2,000 reported sex crimes that were not investigated, 1,000 will be reopened. Officials also found 346 other rape complaints buried under paperwork, and expect to find more.