Audit blasts sex crimes response

Report faults nearly entire county system for 16 percent rape ‘solve rate’

By Nick Budnick

The Portland Tribune, Jun 19, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (12 Reader comments)

KOBBI R. BLAIR / STATESMAN JOURNAL

Craig Stoelk, a longtime sex-crime detective from the Salem Police Department, was hired to compile a report for city Auditor Gary Blackmer’s audit of the Multnomah County sexual-assault response system. The highly critical audit is scheduled to be released today.

City Auditor Gary Blackmer has dropped a bombshell on the Portland Police Bureau’s sex-crime detectives’ detail as well as the entire Multnomah County sexual-assault response system.

An audit he released publicly Tuesday morning blames sloppy and lethargic detective work, a failure by hospitals to give special training to nurses, and a systemwide malaise for why this city solves but a fraction of the reported rapes that other U.S. cities do.

“The surprise for me was that it wasn’t just the detectives (who are at fault),” Blackmer said. “It was the whole system.”

Portland’s clearance rate for solving reported rapes ranks 20th out of 21 similar-size cities, the audit said. Not only that, but the “solve rate” continues to decline – despite an audit calling for bureauwide investigative improvements two years ago.

Assisted by a veteran Salem sex-crime detective, the audit blamed high turnover, poor case management, lack of training, a failure to aggressively pursue cases, and a unit culture that puts the burden of keeping cases moving on the victim, not detectives.

The result: a system that is not “victim-centered,” the audit said.

Some officers took issue with the audit’s specifics, for instance saying that cities defined their clearance rates differently, and therefore could not be fairly compared. However, police Chief Rosie Sizer said the bottom line is that the bureau’s clearance rate is unacceptably low, and the audit’s recommendations will be implemented.

“The audit exposed ways the whole system, the police bureau included, could improve how we handle cases of alleged sexual assault,” she said.

The audit followed up on one in 2005 that looked at clearance rates in all police bureau detective units and found them wanting. Of particular concern was the Sexual Assault Detail’s poor performance.

Between 1999 and 2004, of all 21 U.S. cities with populations between 500,000 and 1 million, Portland’s solve rate of 16 percent for rapes ranked 20th out of the 21 cities, better only than Tucson, Ariz., according to the statistics Blackmer obtained from the U.S. Department of Justice.

In comparison, San Francisco’s rate was 31 percent, Detroit’s 50 percent and Milwaukee’s 80 percent – the latter a fivefold improvement over Portland’s number.

To drill down on the numbers, Blackmer hired as a consultant Craig Stoelk of the Salem Police Department, a longtime sex-crime detective who is a trainer for the state’s Sexual Assault Training Institute.

Stoelk, who wrote a 32-page report to Blackmer that was even more scathing than the final audit, agreed to elaborate on his findings with the Portland Tribune.

Blackmer and Stoelk found fault at nearly every level of the system, with the exception of patrol officers, whom Stoelk said wrote exemplary reports that documented and followed up on victim accounts.

Protocol not followed

Blackmer’s staff listened to 55 of the emergency rape calls placed to the city Bureau of Emergency Communications 911 dispatch center, more than half the total rape calls in 2006.

The audit said that while call-takers were uniformly professional, they often did not follow the Bureau of Emergency Communications protocol to advise victims not to bathe, cleanse or destroy clothing and bedding.

Not only that, but bureau protocol lacks elements of the more detailed model policy recommended by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, such as advising callers to collect urine in a clean bottle.

In response, city Commissioner Randy Leonard, who oversees the 911 center, wrote a letter promising to improve training for the emergency communication call-takers.

Another focus of the audit was hospitals. By long-standing agreement, only one of four area hospitals, Oregon Health & Science University, provides the specialized training for nurses so they can preserve the evidence necessary to make prosecutions stick.

As a result, the audit said, cases suffer and victims often are subjected to being shuffled from hospital to hospital, potentially encouraging them to drop their complaints. Multnomah County ranks 30th out of 36 counties in offering such nurses, called Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners, or SANEs.

The good news, said Chanda Evans of the Portland Women’s Crisis Line, is that in light of the pending audit, two area hospitals, Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center in Gresham and Portland Adventist Hospital, recently agreed to provide SANE training.

Legacy Emanuel in Portland offers special nurses for children, but not adults. Asked why, spokeswoman Lisa Wood cited the hospitals’ long-standing agreement.

“OHSU actually wanted to take on that role,” she said.

Stoelk doesn’t buy it, saying the system’s inconvenience in the status quo hurts victims and wastes police resources. Hospitals, he said, should offer the training “as a service to the community.”

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