Where We Stand:
Central Florida must confront domestic violence and pursue solutions proven successful to end it.
There’s an unmistakable message in the unspeakable tragedy of the shooting deaths of four children and the critical wounding of an Orlando police officer: Authorities in Central Florida must do more to confront the scourge of domestic violence.
As the Sentinel’s Beth Kassab reported, domestic violence has claimed the lives of 35 to 48 people a year over the past five years in the seven-county region of Orange, Seminole, Osceola, Lake, Volusia, Brevard and Polk. In several of the most notorious incidents, the killers had records for domestic offenses.
That was the case this past week with Gary Wayne Lindsey Jr., who had a 21-hour standoff with Orlando police after his girlfriend reported being battered by him. Lindsey shot the four children ages 1 to 11 — two of them his own — and Officer Kevin Valencia before turning his weapon on himself.
Carol Wick, the former director at Orange County’s Harbor House domestic violence shelter, told Kassab that the shootings could have been prevented because Lindsey was a “classic A-list offender.” He was a convicted felon given a 10-year suspended sentence in Volusia County in 2008 after he pleaded no contest to domestic battery as well as arson and fleeing a law enforcement officer.
Lindsey was placed on probation and went on to violate it multiple times, including a 2012 arrest on domestic-violence charges that prosecutors declined to pursue when the alleged victim wouldn’t cooperate with them. Rather than send him to prison for his violations, judges sentenced him to a few months in jail or released him.
It’s baffling that a violent felon with a rap sheet like Lindsey’s would avoid imprisonment following repeated probation violations. It’s hard to escape the impression that at least some judges and prosecutors in Central Florida aren’t taking domestic violence seriously enough.
Wick told Kassab that Central Florida should consider a proactive approach to domestic violence adopted in High Point, N.C., a town of about 100,000 people. People there who are suspected of domestic violence are monitored and warned of serious consequences by police and prosecutors.
High Point’s approach is showing results. The repeat-offense rate among those put on notice is low. The number of domestic-violence-related murders has dropped by almost two-thirds.
When Wick and others promoted the High Point model for Central Florida in 2016, they met with skepticism from some local leaders, including Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings and Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer. Demings was concerned the model might not translate to an urban county with more than 10 times as many people. Dyer, according to a spokeswoman, worried it could create more danger for the people threatened by the suspects.
Meanwhile, however, other communities larger than High Point — including Hollywood, Fla., a city of 150,000 — have adopted similar models with promising results. And High Point’s police chief told Kassab that its approach has not increased the risk to victims.
In Orange County, the High Point model could be more narrowly targeted to neighborhoods where statistics show it is most needed. Harbor House achieved success in reducing domestic violence when it focused another prevention program on Orange County’s Pine Castle community in 2012.
Years ago Orange County leaders had the foresight to create a Domestic Violence Task Force. Its members have spearheaded positive policy changes before. We hope they’ll seize the initiative on a county-wide — or better yet, region-wide — effort to implement more steps to prevent more tragedies.
Last week’s deaths of four children and wounding of a police officer are a call for action for leaders.
Central Florida would be wise to consider strategies on domestic violence that have succeeded elsewhere.