View full sizeThomas Melvin WilkinsMOBILE, Ala. -- The Mobile Police Department reported 37 forcible rapes to the FBI last year. Press-Register reporters learned about just 13 of them, in some cases after calling police to inquire about tips from readers.
Police spokesman Officer Christopher Levy said rape cases are often withheld from the public because many are “domestic rapes” that “do not pose a threat to the community.”
A rape committed by a husband against his wife, Levy said, or a parent who sexually assaults his or her child, “although a crime, is not considered a public matter.”
Police policies in Mobile tightly control access to information about all kinds of crime, limiting the media’s ability to bring it to a wider audience. Rape and sexual assault cases, in particular, show how the department puts the policies into practice.
In fact, while the FBI defines forcible rape as “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly against her will,” the Police Department lists only first-degree rape cases in its rape reports to the FBI.
Attempted rapes — which the FBI defines as forcible rapes — are reported to the FBI as assaults.
The Press-Register was unable late last week to contact FBI administrators who could comment on Mobile’s rape numbers and the Police Department’s method of calculating them.
The FBI uses the information from cities in preparing its annual uniform crime report that offers substantial data about crime across the U.S. The FBI defines assault as “an unlawful attack by one person upon another for the purpose of inflicting severe or aggravated bodily injury,” usually accompanied by the use of a weapon.
Asked two weeks ago how many media releases the Police Department sent out last year regarding rape cases, Maj. Carol Rose, who oversees the public information office, said that the request “will be researched and the information will be provided once the research is complete.”
The department later declined to provide an answer, saying that there’s no accurate way to calculate how many cases were discussed through various means.
The Press-Register then requested the official police report about one of the rape cases that the newspaper learned about last year.
Such reports are written by the officer or officers who respond to the scene, giving key details about the case on the front page, and perhaps relating a narrative description on the back.
Alabama law requires that the front page of a police report be made available to the public, but not the back page. The Police Department charges $10 for each one-page report.
This particular report concerned the rape of a 13-year-old girl who was followed by a middle-aged man from her school bus to her home on March 9, 2009. But more than half of the front page had not been filled out. For example, it left blank any information about how the man gained entry to the house, although it noted that the weather at the time was “clear.”
Last year, police remained silent about that case for two days, until three of the girl’s relatives allegedly attacked a man they suspected in the crime, beating him with a metal pipe.
The Press-Register also requested the report of an Aug. 4, 2009, sodomy in which a man forced a 14-year-old girl into an abandoned house and sexually assaulted her.
This case was not reported to the media or the public until two months later, when the Press-Register discovered during a routine check of Mobile County Metro Jail records that a man had been arrested for such a crime.
At the time, police said that the lack of information about the case stemmed from an internal breakdown of communication.
As with the report about the rape of the 13-year-old girl, the copy of the police report given to the Press-Register about the sodomy crime was largely blank.
It is this type of crime that the Police Department reports to the FBI as an assault, Levy said, rather than a rape.
The department also reports to the FBI only those first-degree rapes that are substantiated through investigation by February of each year, when the annual reports are due.
Mobile reported 37 forcible rapes to the FBI in 2009, a far lower total than the three other larger Alabama cities.
Those others:
- Birmingham: 198
- Huntsville: 89
- Montgomery: 85
The lower Mobile number may stem, in part, from the fact that Mobile police do not add attempted rapes to the tally, although the FBI includes them in its definition of forcible rape.
Overall, the Police Department investigated 73 alleged rapes in 2009. According to police spokesman Officer Christopher Levy, 37 had been “substantiated” at the time that the department reported its rape data to the FBI in February this year.
Later, he said, three of those 37 allegations were discredited.
Last year, according to Levy, police investigated a total of 73 alleged rapes. The department reported 37 of those to the FBI, Levy said, and later determined that three were unfounded.
Of the 34 rape cases, police have closed the investigations into all but two, Levy said. Twenty-three cases were cleared through arrests, while the others were cleared through various means, including the death of a suspect.
As of August this year, 40 first-degree rapes have been reported to the Police Department, according to the department’s website.
It is unclear how many of those have been disclosed to the media.
On Sept. 2, the department made public two rape cases when it announced the arrest of Thomas Melvin Wilkins. A police news release said that Wilkins was “believed to be a dangerous predator,” although the police had not revealed for two months that a predator might be at large.
Police waited to release information about the rapes until investigators could confirm that the allegations had merit, Levy said in September.
Recently, when a husband told police that his wife had been raped in a public park, the department kept quiet, not notifying the media. Information later came to light when people living in the area of the park asked police about it at a community meeting.
According to police, the woman was in a park at the dead end of Chidester Avenue when a man grabbed her and accosted her. Levy said the rape case was never relayed to the media because “we don’t have any witnesses, or any other similar reports in that area.”