This link connects to a great article about Patricia Prickett, a woman who tried to teach L.A. cops how to handle domestic violence cases better. She worked with cops to write better reports, reports that were courtroom-ready, because victims seldom testify, and many are intimidated into recanting, so the reports are needed to put abusers away; prosecutors reject two thirds of cases as unproveable, so the reports help. She found that a lot of cops were resistant to even accepting the problem: they argue that only the poor beat their wives, and that putting cops on domestic violence means they’re not out there fighting what they think of as “real crime” – as those DV isn’t a crime. Without a push from their captains, cops don’t push hard on DV cases.
The article, incidentally, points out that police can indeed be sued for lousy responses to DV cases: as far back as Bruno v. Codd (1978), 12 women were awarded damages because the police dropped the ball, and one woman got $2.3 million in Thurman v. City of Torrington (1987) due to police incompetence.
The article pointed out other challenges to the DV fight. The effort against DV is very new, only a few decades old; even university course work was barbarically simple or nonexistent only a few decades ago. Some judges don’t even know the DV laws, and get sucked into the manipulations of the cool, charming abuser, vis-à-vis the emotional victim. Men’s rights groups are spreading massive amounts of anti-wife propaganda.
Prickett believes that abuser only change if they get years of therapy and if jail or the threat of it is involved; studies support the idea that jail time is what makes them stop.
Prickett stressed something is critical for all to accept: “domestic violence is everybody's problem." It’s everybody’s job to fight this.
No comments:
Post a Comment