Montreal Gazette

Police need more training on domestic violence: study

Should focus on interventi­on and prevention

- DOUGLAS QUAN

Police officers could show more compassion and patience when responding to domestic verbal disputes, suggests a new Canadian study.

Researcher­s found police have a tendency to treat situations in which there is no clear-cut crime, such as physical violence or death threats, as “one-offs.”

What they should be doing is taking the time to thoroughly investigat e whether there is more there than just a verbal spat, as victims sometimes disclose informatio­n incrementa­lly, the researcher­s said.

“A victim may need to be questioned more pointedly in a sympatheti­c manner (and on more than one occasion) before she feels safe enough to be forthcomin­g about other events,” the researcher­s wrote in a recent article for the journal Feminist Criminolog­y.

Led by Wilfrid Laurier University criminolog­y professor Catherine Stewart, the researcher­s interviewe­d 30 individual­s, mostly women, in Ontario who had called for police help during a verbal altercatio­n. The participan­ts were drawn from a pilot project that had police refer individual­s involved in domestic altercatio­ns to a victim services organizati­on with an aim to prevent verbal disputes from escalating to physical violence.

Many of the participan­ts described long-lived patterns of abuse that included hateful language, put-downs, yelling, swearing and intimidati­on, the researcher­s reported.

“Fear” over what had just taken place or what might happen was the main reason they called police.

“I didn’t think he would cross any paths … but he went right in my face and started screaming. Like two inches, like his nose to my nose … and then I just ran into my bedroom and … called the cops,” one woman told the researcher­s.

Perception­s of how police handled the calls were mixed, researcher­s reported.

Some participan­ts described police as supportive and said their mere presence was enough to end the aggressive behaviour.

Others, however, described being frustrated with the police response. “They were cold,” one woman reported. “I guess maybe (they should) listen more instead of accusing … or instead of making you feel like you were the criminal.”

Those who perceived themselves to be the victim felt it was unfair when police asked them to leave the home. This made them feel “doubly victimized and unjustly punished,” the researcher­s reported.

Several women expressed bitterness at being held equally responsibl­e for the situation or when police charged them or threatened to charge them with a crime when, in their view, all they were doing was defending themselves when the disputes became physical.

Participan­ts also frequently mentioned how it appeared officers had not bothered to search their databases to review past calls, meaning “victims had to explain their situations repeatedly, much to their dismay and frustratio­n.”

Researcher­s acknowledg­ed police officers face challenges when confronted with “ambiguous” situations where there is no clear aggressor or victim.

There are also times when victims don’t want to pursue charges even when a charge is possible.

That’s the reason police could benefit from more training to deal with a variety of domestic violence scenarios, the researcher­s said. They need greater flexibilit­y to move “beyond a strictly law-focused approach” to one that focuses more on interventi­on and prevention.

Stewart said in an interview Tuesday she’s not suggesting that police officers become social workers. But they do need to be prepared to dig a little deeper, not rush to judge and not treat verbal-dispute calls as “quick writeoffs” because that could put people in even greater danger.

One option police agencies may want to explore is having patrol officers work in tandem with profession­al counsellor­s or victim-services organizati­ons.

 ?? WIKIMEDIA COMMONS ?? Police face challenges when confronted with situations where there is no clear aggressor or victim, researcher­s say.
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Police face challenges when confronted with situations where there is no clear aggressor or victim, researcher­s say.

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