He cited Inquirer stories that showed how the sex-crimes unit mishandled thousands of cases over the last two decades. Timoney made his plan public last month. He and the women's leaders worked out many of the details during a two-hour meeting Friday at Police Headquarters. Women Organized Against Rape, the Women's Law Project and the Penn Women's Center will do the monitoring. Carole Johnson, executive director of Women Organized Against Rape, said Timoney seemed serious about remaking the unit.
Public confidence has to be regained.
The women's leaders will review the reports at the sex-crimes unit's headquarters at the former Frankford Arsenal. The names of the complainants will have been deleted. That and other subterfuges were heavily used from 1981, when the rape squad was established, until 1998. During that span, the unit improperly shelved about a third of its caseload. The mothballed cases typically received little or no investigation, and victims were not told what had happened to their complaints.