Police Get Special Training on Domestic Violence : New California Law Is Tough on Wife-Beaters

A couple argued one night last month in Southeast San Diego, and the husband began disassembling his car engine so his wife couldn’t drive away. After a scuffle, the wife called the police and said she had been beaten. Police arrived to find the wife in tears, but not visibly hurt, and she said she wanted to press charges.

A year ago the couple might have been urged to make up, and an informal report might have been filed.

But last month the husband was handcuffed and driven to County Jail, even after the wife changed her mind and said she wanted the battery charge dropped.

The hard-nosed approach typifies the way new state guidelines are changing San Diego police procedures on domestic quarrels.

A California law effective in January requires officers to report all incidents of domestic violence and arrest suspected wife-beaters, even if injury is not immediately apparent. Thirty city officers a week are enrolled in an eight-hour training course to learn the new policy, and the entire force is expected to be retrained by year’s end.

Formerly, police often tried to mediate routine family disputes without putting couples through the legal process. Only evidence of a seriously injured victim was likely to put an assailant in jail. But repeat instances of abuse and concern for victims’ rights prompted several women’s rights groups to push for a stricter police response in the state penal code.

“The old walk-them-around-the-block approach was a Band-Aid that just wasn’t working,” said Joyce Faidley, director of public affairs for the Center for Women’s Studies and Services. She is an instructor on the new guidelines for the Police Academy.

Under the revisions adopted last year, officers at the scene of a domestic dispute must arrest suspects if it appears that a felony has been committed, and must inform the victim of the right to press charges. If the victim says she or he wants to press charges, even for a misdemeanor battery, police arrest and hold the suspect in County Jail until arraignment--which can take three days--or until he makes bail of $500 to $5,000. All battery victims are also informed of available legal and psychological support services.

“Officers are to record and offer the legal option of prosecution in the same manner as they would for a street crime,” said Sgt. Robert Stinson, police field operations officer.

The revisions also better protect the department in court. The new procedure was partially prompted by a highly publicized Connecticut case in which police failed to heed a woman’s calls for protection from her estranged husband. She was subsequently beaten and partly paralyzed by the husband. She sued the Torrington Police Department for neglect and was awarded $2.3 million in June, 1985.

“It really is a fundamental change in the law,” said Chuck Rogers, a deputy district attorney assigned to police training. “The policy should, if you can legally do so, make an arrest. Sometimes we’ll try a case even if the spouse doesn’t want it.”

Stinson said the department was surprised at the wide-ranging implications of the law and assigned him full-time to implement it. Police get 2,400 calls a month that are related to domestic violence.

The change reflects a break with a traditional view of domestic disputes.

“They historically have been treated as private matters, although crimes have occurred,” Stinson said. “Eventually it was discovered as a severe problem that can’t just be handled in the home.”

He said officers welcome the new policy because it gives them clear guidelines for handling domestic calls. “The vast majority of officers to whom this information is taught accept it positively because finally they are allowed to do something instead of talk people out of it,” he said. An arrest is designed to “stop the whirlpool effect” of cyclical violence and is often the first signal to abusers that they have done something wrong, he said.

The new policy involves more paper work and effort, but Stinson said a preliminary survey showed that it produced only a 2% increase in police workloads.

“Hopefully the decrease in repeat offenses in the long run will actually decrease the workload,” he said.

But Faidley said some officers are hesitant to embrace the policy because it forces them to delve into potentially explosive family fights. Stinson said 18% of officers killed in the line of duty nationwide have died while handling domestic disputes.

“We’ve had some hostile classes,” Faidley said. “Officers are real concerned that the arrest will make the situation worse.” Plus, she said, the workload increase has not gone unnoticed. “That’s the one thing an officer hates: more paper work,” she said.

Police said it’s too early to assess the policy’s effectiveness, but a 1983 study conducted by the Minneapolis Police Department showed that it could work. Arrests were found to be twice as effective at preventing repeat instances of domestic violence as either mediation or separation of the spouses.