[OH] "Domestic violence particularly difficult if abuser is an officer"

Domestic violence particularly difficult if abuser is an officer
The Plain Dealer, (Cleveland, OH)
Laura Johnston ljohnsto@plaind.com 216-999-4115
September 14, 2007
[Excerpts] To women abused by police officers, every path seems doomed. Call the police? He is the police. Flee to a shelter? He knows where the shelter is. File a restraining order? He could retaliate. Police officers have guns and badges. They can track unlisted numbers, check license plates and stalk victims from their cruisers. Their position confers credibility. And often, women's advocates say, they're protected by a brotherhood of blue... In June, it was married Canton officer Bobby Cutts Jr., charged with murdering his girlfriend, Jessie Davis. That same month, Cleveland Clinic officer Robert Grzywaczewski shot his girlfriend dead and then killed himself. In July, Cleveland officer Rex Mehaffey shot his estranged wife, then killed himself... Often, victims don't report abuse because the prospect of reporting it to the police - to the abuser's friends and co-workers - is terrifying... The National Center for Women and Policing lists two studies placing officer domestic violence at 40 percent of police families... "A police officer's training and professional status add extra levels of sophistication to his style of psychological and physical battering," according to [Diane] Wetendorf's handbook. "In addition to his personal power, he has institutional power - the badge, the gun and the support of the police department - and he constantly threatens to use them all against you." If victims call 9-1-1, they fear the responding officers may honor the department's camaraderie and side with their buddy, [Diane] Wetendorf says. Even if the department investigates, if an officer is convicted of domestic violence, is fired and banned from carrying a gun, the violence could continue. "Taking away his badge and gun doesn't take away their training, and it doesn't take away their knowledge," Wetendorf said. "And it doesn't necessarily take away their personal connections"...


I thought this would be a great time to publish excerpts from what I believe to be the last article I could find from Ohio on the TOPIC of officer-involved domestic violence - from 1998. (My how time flies as people there continue to die in cop relationships!) And it becomes obvious that no one has done any new studies since then. Same figures from the same studies - 9 years earlier - are cited in both articles. Not much of a priority it seems. We need a comprehensive new study - one that asks the right questions, not just the safe ones.

VIOLENCE AND THE SHIELD
DOMESTIC ABUSE BY POLICE IS TRAGEDY ON AND OFF THE JOB
The Plain Dealer, (Cleveland, OH)
October 6, 1998
[Excerpts] The prospect of a police officer beating his wife by night while having to respond to a woman's call for protection from an abusive boyfriend by day might be hard to imagine. But it happens. More often than one might think. Although experts say the full extent of the problem is not yet known, in two studies a staggering 40 percent of police officers admitted they had used some kind of violence in their homes... Leanore Boulin Johnson, a sociology professor at Arizona State University, surveyed 728 officers asking if they had ever lost control and behaved violently toward their spouses. Forty percent answered yes... "I found that violence is more acceptable because officers are so exposed to it. We found the more they are exposed ... the more likely they are to behave violently toward their spouse. The other factor is what I call `authoritarian spillover,' difficulty turning off the police role at home.' Another study, published in Police Studies, an academic journal, surveyed 425 officers who were asked if they used violence - defined as anything from shoving to using a gun - with their spouse or children in the previous year. Again, about 40 percent responded affirmatively... Between 1993 and 1996, John Feltgen, police chief in Weston, Fla., surveyed close to 100 agencies around the country for the International Association of Chiefs of Police... Feltgen came to a disturbing conclusion: "Traditionally, officers do protect one another, they try and help one another out. They always looked the other way when called to a domestic violence incident involving another officer, and rarely write the incident as a report or, if they do, they write it up as an 'unfounded disturbance'... "A police wife [who is being abused] is really in a bad position," said Lorain Police Chief Celestino Rivera, who heads an all-male department of 111 officers. If the wife calls police, "she will lose not only her financial support, but she's dealing with a person whose whole being is wrapped up in being a cop and he's lost that... Somehow we need to get the word out to police spouses that the department will enforce the law, and protect them. All she's hearing is her partner saying, 'Those are my buddies, nobody's going to do anything'... We need to send a message that if you're having those problems, you can come to us confidentially, we'll help you get the help you need. We do that - but not until it reaches a crisis."

UPDATE:

Because the 2007 article has been taken offline I am posting the full article here. It's so good it just can't be lost.

Domestic violence particularly difficult if abuser is an officer
The Plain Dealer, (Cleveland, OH)
Laura Johnston ljohnsto@plaind.com
September 14, 2007

To women abused by police officers, every path seems doomed.

Call the police? He is the police.

Flee to a shelter? He knows where the shelter is.

File a restraining order? He could retaliate.

Police officers have guns and badges. They can track unlisted numbers, check license plates and stalk victims from their cruisers. Their position confers credibility. And often, women's advocates say, they're protected by a brotherhood of blue.

"They make you think you can't do anything about it," said Donzella Malone, author of a book about her friend, Akron doctor Margo Prade. In 1997, Prade's ex-husband, a police captain, murdered her.

"That's how they hold them hostage," Malone said.

The women's predicament is customarily unseen.

But in recent months, Northeast Ohio has seen three highly publicized cases in which police officers were accused of murdering - or trying to murder - their significant others.

In June, it was married Canton officer Bobby Cutts Jr., charged with murdering his girlfriend, Jessie Davis. That same month, Cleveland Clinic officer Robert Grzywaczewski shot his girlfriend dead and then killed himself.

In July, Cleveland officer Rex Mehaffey shot his estranged wife, then killed himself.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police estimates that officers are involved in domestic violence as least as often as everyone else, which is more than 10 percent of Americans, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The National Center for Women and Policing lists two studies placing officer domestic violence at 40 percent of police families.

That's not to say that every police officer is a batterer. But victims of domestic violence by police officers are still as isolated and invisible as all victims of domestic violence were three decades ago, according to Diane Wetendorf, author of a victims handbook on police domestic violence.

A brutal crime no one would suspect

"It's kind of a dirty little secret," said Dottie Davis, deputy chief of the Fort Wayne, Ind., Police Department. "It's a very ethical and professional organization. However, there are people who can fool background investigators and psychologists who do hiring."

In the Fort Wayne department, Davis said, about 1 percent of law enforcement couples report domestic violence. Most likely, she said, many more never tell.

Margo Prade never complained of abuse, her friend Malone said. Her ex-husband, Douglas, never hit her before he shot her five or six times in her minivan in November 1997.

The Prades - she was 41 and he was a decade older and a 30-year department veteran - were married 17 years before they divorced.

Douglas Prade cheated on his wife. He taunted her about her weight and routinely screamed at her, Malone said. After the couple divorced, he spied on her, taped her telephone conversations, threatened her and refused to move out.

"He wasn't going away," Malone said. "It was control."

Police-involved domestic violence isn't new, Wetendorf said. But because victims rarely report the crimes or testify, it's tough to quantify.

Often, victims don't report abuse because the prospect of reporting it to the police - to the abuser's friends and co-workers - is terrifying.

"A police officer's training and professional status add extra levels of sophistication to his style of psychological and physical battering," according to Wetendorf's handbook. "In addition to his personal power, he has institutional power - the badge, the gun and the support of the police department - and he constantly threatens to use them all against you."

If victims call 9-1-1, they fear the responding officers may honor the department's camaraderie and side with their buddy, Wetendorf says. Even if the department investigates, if an officer is convicted of domestic violence, is fired and banned from carrying a gun, the violence could continue.

"Taking away his badge and gun doesn't take away their training, and it doesn't take away their knowledge," Wetendorf said. "And it doesn't necessarily take away their personal connections."

Police now craft abuse policies

Police have discussed the conundrum of officer-involved domestic violence since the 1980s. Model policies were created in the late 1990s, Davis said.

"It happens and we need to deal with it," said Randy Carroll, chief of the Bellingham, Wash., police, which, like departments across that state, enforces a domestic-violence policy.

In Washington in 2003, Tacoma Police Chief David Brame shot and killed his wife, Crystal, in a mall parking lot in front of his two children, then fatally shot himself. A state law passed the next year requires law enforcement to work with victim advocates to develop officer-involved domestic violence policies.

Like Bellingham, Akron police have policies that address cops involved in domestic violence. They've also trained with Wetendorf.

The policy mandates sending the Domestic Response Unit to all domestic incidents involving Akron officers to ensure that "all domestic incidents involving active members of the Akron Police Department are investigated in an equitable and unbiased manner."

Since the unit was founded in 2002, its 16 members have investigated 52 domestic incidents, 20 of which were classified as domestic violence, said Capt. Daniel Zampelli. The department has about 450 officers.

"As best we can, we try to stay blind to the individual and look at the facts of the case," Zampelli said.

Neighboring Cuyahoga Falls, which has seen two recent cases of officer-involved domestic violence, doesn't have a policy specifically to deal with the issue - simply because it hadn't happened before, Chief John Conley said.

"In my 21 years . . . this is the first time this has come up," Conley said.

Parma, too, has not had to address the situation of officers involved in domestic violence, spokesman Marty Compton said. If an officer were accused, he said, he would probably be placed on leave.

In the last 25 years, at least 10 Cleveland officers have been investigated for domestic violence and several were suspended, records show.

The department requires that for emergency calls involving officers and domestic violence, an officer ranked higher than the officer in question must respond, along with someone from internal affairs, said Lt. Thomas Stacho, a Cleveland police spokesman. If internal affairs finds probable cause, criminal charges and administrative charges would be filed.

"Basically, our policy is that . . . we enforce the law against police officers the way we're expected to enforce the law against every other citizen," Stacho said.

Having internal affairs - which answers directly to the chief of police - investigate eliminates conflict, he said.

In an ideal world, say Wetendorf and Davis, police agencies would avoid hiring potentially abusive officers through prehiring screenings and background checks. And the culture would change.

"Until we admit that we are capable of committing acts of domestic violence even as police officers, we cannot address the root of the problem," said Bellingham's Chief Carroll. "Until we find a way, a different way of socializing our male children, we will be dealing with male aggression to women in society."

Until then, Wetendorf said, victims of police violence must regain trust in their own intuition. They must tell someone. They must take steps to protect their lives.

They must find a way out of the maze.

Plain Dealer reporter Gabriel Baird contributed to this story. To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: ljohnsto@plaind.com, 216-999-4115