Breaking Rank (5 page)

       
•
  
She's afraid she'll lose her kids

       
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She's accepted his apologies and promises, and figures he won't do it again

       
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She feels pressured by her religion or her family to stick it out

       
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He's made threats, and she believes he'll act on them

       
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She still loves him

       
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She hasn't the money to leave

       
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She feels she's to blame

       
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She believes he'll commit suicide

       
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She doesn't think she'll find another partner

       
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She believes the negative things he has said about her, and hasn't the self-confidence to take control of her life

       
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She has no support system, no place to go, no one to talk to

       
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She doesn't trust the police or the courts to help

       
•
  
She thinks abuse goes with the territory

       
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She doesn't want to be a failure, in her eyes or in the eyes of others

These realities have prompted Paymar and others to redefine the question:
Why doesn't she just leave?
becomes,
In what ways is a woman
trapped
in an abusive relationship?

You know, there's an irony here, David. More than any of your predecessors you seemed to take DV seriously. Most police chiefs don't. They talk a good game but it's a rare chief who puts the needed time, energy, money, and imagination into DV prevention and enforcement. Do you remember what I inherited in the department thirty-two miles north of yours?

When I got to Seattle in 1994, robbery detectives were handling DV follow-up investigations.
Robbery dicks!
As a
collateral
duty. No wonder DV ranked at the bottom of the food chain within the department. The very structure of the organization proclaimed domestic violence the lowest of the low-priority assignments. One detective, unburdened by sensitivity, told me, “You spend your days handing Kleenexes to some sobbing broad whose old man gave her what she deserved.”

Them was fightin' words to my ears. I went back to my office that very afternoon and wrote out the skeleton of a plan to put an end to family violence in Seattle.

My colleagues said it was foolish to set a goal of
ending
domestic violence. Why? Because it couldn't be attained. Goals need to be reachable, they said, otherwise your cops and the community and the politicians get frustrated. I chose to think differently: I
wanted
people to get “frustrated” when we fell short. Every time a wife is battered, a date is raped, a child is scalded, an
elder is abused, we
should
be “frustrated.” Hell, we should be goddamn
outraged!

In 1985 the U.S. surgeon general declared family violence a national epidemic. The American Medical Association and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took a similar stand.
Violence and the Family: Report of the APA
[American Psychological Association],
Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family
(1996) supports the notion that DV is indeed a national epidemic (see sidebar below).

At least 25 percent of all American homes play host to domestic abuse; one of every four men has used or will use violence against a partner during the life of their relationship; 30 percent of all female homicide victims are slain by their partner or former partner. And, children witness 80 percent of the DV assaults against their mothers.

What comes up for me, David, when I think about why I did not become a physical batterer of my children (including a son who's kind enough not to recall the one firm swat to his butt I gave him when he was four) or of my intimate partners was that my old man didn't start his “lickings” until I was four or five. I read somewhere that if a parent starts beating a kid at, say, one or two or three that child's likely to be one seriously mucked-up adult. The Boys Club of National City also helped, a lot: If I wasn't hunkered down in the front row of the Bay Theater (or out terrorizing the neighborhood with my slingshot), I was at the Boys Club playing basketball, building balsa wood CO
₂
land-rockets, and absorbing important life lessons from Coach Frank Leinsteiner and Director Jay Sutcliffe—two men who, unknown to them (and to me, at the time), were my own personal models of male decency and nonviolent communication.

Plus, I never saw my father beat my mother. I don't believe he ever did.

I know this is “personal stuff,” David, me jabbering on about our moms and dads, our upbringing. Most cops like opening up about their private lives as much as they enjoy a lecture from the Rev. Al Sharpton. But violence in the home
is not private.
Who you voted for, what you read, what you watch on the tube, what you do when you get naked (kept within, ahem, prudent boundaries)—that's private. Domestic violence is as much a
public
crime as auto theft or a drive-by shooting.

In the early 1970s, clueless that I myself fit the profile of a DV offender, I began to speak out against domestic violence, including child and elder abuse. I was motivated by memorable moments on the beat: a husband who stabbed his wife to death because his dinner was late; a man who allowed his elderly father and his father's twin brother to rot away in a converted garage full of human and dog feces; a buffed-out hod-carrier who whipped welts onto the faces and backs of his six children (all under the age of ten) before binding his diminutive wife at the wrists and ankles, then beating her face into an unrecognizable mush; a mother who shook her baby so hard she produced “boxer's” or “shaken baby” syndrome—which causes a slow degeneration of nerves and other neuropsychological defects in children as they grow.

I spoke out everywhere, David, sharing my personal story (the sanitized Norm-as-kid-victim version at that time), rallying others in support of additional resources for prevention, shelters, child and adult protection services, vigorous enforcement and prosecution.

A huge leap forward in my comprehension of the scope, nature, and consequences of domestic violence—and in my commitment to doing something about it—came in 1980 when in Duluth, Minnesota, a small group of daring and dedicated women formed the “Domestic Abuse Intervention Project.” Remember that time, David? Every police chief in the country seemed to have heard about DAIP. Not that they were all that happy with the implications: the identification by the police of a “primary” aggressor, screening for serious threats and/or injuries, mandatory arrests of primary aggressors—it all meant more work for us. But it gave us a clearer, and far more comprehensive picture of the crime of domestic violence—and what to do about it.

Some DAIP theories have been challenged, in most instances by their own ongoing research and analysis, but also by such observers as the late Susan Sontag, the ACLU, and former San Diego police sergeant Anne O'Dell, now an internationally recognized DV expert. They've all raised questions about the most fundamental of DAIP's positions, namely that the primary aggressor in a DV incident be hooked up and taken to jail in
all
cases that result in serious threats and/or physical injury. It's smart theory, predicated on the safety of the victim/survivor and on holding the batterer accountable. All states now have either mandatory or “warrantless” arrest laws. These statutes have saved countless lives. But they can backfire. Busted in front of their partners, some men whose sense of “centrality, superiority, and deservedness” will sit fuming in their jail cells. Plotting deliberate, lethal revenge.

Another problem with mandatory arrests: Cops often make mistakes trying to figure out who the primary aggressor is (this is one of Sontag's concerns; see “Fierce Entanglements” in the November 17, 2002, issue of
The New York Times
). Scratches on a man's face may have been put there by an unprovoked partner. But they could also be the product of a woman defending herself—against being choked to death, for example. I know of a case where a con-wise DV suspect plunged a knife into his own gut just
as the cops walked up to the house. Guess who went to jail that night? Clue: It wasn't the husband.

And the ACLU, of which I am a card-carrying, dues-paying member, argues that
requiring
the police to arrest someone too often leads to false arrests. It's the only law on the books that denies cops the discretion to sort out the facts and circumstances of a given case, and to make a case-by-case judgment about what to do. That's bad law, says the ACLU. I agree, in principle. The discretion to arrest, or not, allows professional cops to make prudent, case-by-case decisions that further the causes of victim safety, offender accountability, and justice.

Yet, as a society we're so far behind the curve in protecting women and children that physical-custody arrests
must
be imposed on police, at least for now. It's kind of like affirmative action. You work hard to remedy the problem, even if it requires crude measures; once you've achieved success you can (and should) drop the program. We're not there yet in the battle against racism, or domestic violence.

That being the case, I shook up my department in Seattle. I took DV away from the robbery dicks (and put them back to work on their first love), ripped off detectives from various units within the Investigations Bureau, set up a formal domestic violence unit, recruited a smart, aggressive lieutenant to run it, gave her a virtual blank check to develop the unit—and to staff it with the very best people. I made the DV unit part of a newly formed “Family and Youth Protection Bureau,” headed by an assistant chief.

Within a year, twenty-five investigators were working DV cases exclusively, with almost as many additional detectives specializing in stranger-on-stranger sexual assaults—far more than any other centralized investigative function. Each investigator received intensive training, some in specialties that helped establish them as national experts in such areas as stalking, elder abuse prevention and enforcement, computer-based “lethality testing” (to help us predict which of the 10,000 or so annual DV calls in Seattle were most likely to result in death or serious injury), protection orders, even a “DV fugitive” strike team that went out in full uniform, ballistic helmets, and high-powered rifles to take down DV suspects who'd failed to show up in court or who had violated restraining or protection orders.

That last one was partly for show, I admit. It symbolized my priorities, and sent a clear signal to the cop culture that DV enforcement is not social work, it's genuine crime-fighting police work. But it also bowed to the reality that the most risky moment in the life of a DV case is when the guy finally faces facts: when it dawns on him that she really doesn't want him, that she's leaving him—for good. Isn't that right, David? That's also the moment when cops who attempt to intervene are most likely to get blown away. You and I both know a “family beef” is one of the most dangerous 911 calls that are broadcast over the police radio.

Speaking of which: we trained our radio dispatchers, too. Remember those tapes you listened to in your office, David? The type that get played on
60 Minutes
or the local newscast? A woman or a kid is on the line begging us to get there, now! Before Daddy strangles Mommy. Those tapes always give me the willies. They drive home the absolute need for our phone operators and dispatchers to know
exactly
what to say and do, and what not to say or do. (Lessons I'll not repeat here, or anywhere else outside of a training classroom, for fear that some batterer will pick up on our tricks.) Employees who take these calls are forced to make rapid, life-and-death decisions. They need intensive, ongoing training to help them make the right call.