Treatment of Spousal Abuse Cases Criticized : Law enforcement: Group says Sheriff’s Department’s handling of Linkenauger case shows inconsistent attitude toward domestic violence.

The handling of spousal abuse complaints by a Moorpark woman whose husband beat her to death typifies the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department’s uneven approach to domestic violence calls, a leading group for battered women charged Monday.

“What I have seen, frankly, is a lot of inconsistency in the Sheriff’s Department,” said Jeri Gray-Reneberg of the Coalition Against Household Violence, a Ventura County group that offers counseling and shelter to battered women and their children. “Sometimes they follow through on calls, and sometimes they don’t.”

JoAnn Linkenauger, 40, was beaten and strangled to death Jan. 17. Her battered, half-naked body was found the next day in a muddy ravine in Somis.

Her husband of three years, James M. Linkenauger, was convicted of murder and sentenced two weeks ago to 25 years to life in prison.

A transcript of a call to 911 by a neighbor the night JoAnn Linkenauger was murdered shows that the Spanish-speaking neighbor’s call was misinterpreted by a translator.

The neighbor reported to the translator that, “There’s a man on the ground dragging a woman” and that “the woman is screaming . . . a lot.”

Instead of conveying exactly what the neighbor had reported, the transcript shows that the translator incorrectly gave the dispatcher this account: “Male subject is, ah, pushing a woman and, ah, she’s screaming.”

Sheriff’s officials have defended their response to domestic violence calls and said deputies receive training in how to handle such matters.

But the Sheriff’s Department is investigating the alleged 911 foul-up, which prosecutors first brought out during James Linkenauger’s trial.

According to a report by the Ventura County Probation Department, the translator and the dispatcher also failed to provide the deputy, who responded to the neighbor’s call, with a location of the incident.

Even though a caller’s telephone number and address appear on the 911 screen when emergency calls are made, the report said, “The dispatcher was unable to provide an exact location of where the call originated.”

The report said the deputy cruised the area, looking for a victim or sounds indicating a disturbance, but was unable to find either and eventually left the neighborhood.

Undersheriff Richard S. Bryce said criticism that the department is insensitive in its handling of domestic violence complaints is unwarranted.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen any statistics that we are any less sensitive to domestic violence” than any other department, Bryce said.

He acknowledged that there seem to be “some unique circumstances in this case.”

“If we made a mistake in this instance, one or more errors, we will deal with them,” Bryce said. “And we will deal with them appropriately.”

The probation report criticized the Sheriff’s Department’s handling of previous complaints that JoAnn Linkenauger made against her husband. Ventura County Superior Court Judge Charles W. Campbell, who sentenced Linkenauger, also criticized the Sheriff’s Department and the criminal-justice system as a whole for failing to heed the woman’s pleas for help.

Bryce, though, said it was the Probation Department that allowed James Linkenauger to complete a diversion program after beating his wife in 1990, even though he continued to assault her while in the program.

“I’m not on a witch hunt,” Bryce said. “I’m just a little sensitive when other agencies are taking pokes at us when they are at least as culpable as we might be.”

In one instance, on Oct. 15, 1991, JoAnn Linkenauger called the Sheriff’s Department and reported that her husband tried to strangle her and punched her in the face three times. Despite a cut on the woman’s lip, Sheriff’s Lt. Steve Giles decided not to arrest James Linkenauger, the probation report said.

Even though that incident occurred 14 months prior to her death, the report suggested it was one of several instances in which the Sheriff’s Department could have helped JoAnn Linkenauger but did not. Giles has not returned phone calls for comment on the case.

“I can say that Lt. Giles is a very highly trained professional,” Bryce said. “He makes good decisions. He’s a top manager in the department.”

Bryce would not confirm which deputies are under investigation, but said of the probe: “From what I’ve seen so far from the investigation, I don’t anticipate that there is some substantial or gross error or negligence on anyone’s part.”

In another instance, a sheriff’s deputy advised a probation officer who was in charge of supervising Linkenauger that his wife’s domestic violence complaints were not to be believed, the probation report said.

“I’m surprised that something that flagrant was discovered,” said Gray-Reneberg of the Coalition Against Household Violence. “But some of them (deputies) have attitudes like that.”

Some other advocates for women in the county were less critical of the Sheriff’s Department.

“It really surprises me that this would happen with our Sheriff’s Department,” said Charles Watson, executive director of Interface Children Family Services of Ventura County. “It’s been our experience that they have been very supportive on issues of domestic violence.”

Watson said he was not familiar with the details of the Linkenauger case, but was aware of some of the criticism of the Sheriff’s Department. “It is not appropriate to ever discount that a woman being hit and complaining about domestic violence is a non-event,” he said. “It at least deserves investigation.”

Hoping to improve response to domestic violence calls, the Ventura County Domestic Violence Task Force has prepared a standardized procedure for handling family-violence calls.

The procedure is scheduled to go into effect in early November, said Oxnard Police Cmdr. Tom Cady, a member of the task force. It will be used by all the county’s law-enforcement agencies and includes tape-recording statements of battery victims and recommends taking their photographs.

Cady said the standardized procedure should boost police referrals to agencies dealing with victims of domestic violence.

Of 3,678 crisis calls received by the Coalition Against Household Violence in fiscal year 1992-93, only 71 were referred by law enforcement officials, said Gray-Reneberg. Seventeen calls came from the Oxnard Police Department, 16 from Ventura police and eight from the Sheriff’s Department.

“Our main objectives are to make sure that everybody in the county is treated the same and that even if victims change their story, the prosecution can continue,” Cady said.

The procedure also requires all law-enforcement officers in the county to undergo special domestic-violence training through the district attorney’s office.