John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News
Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)
October 30, 2006 Monday
Copyright 2006 Denver Publishing Company
An early morning sweep in Denver on Sunday netted seven men wanted on various domestic violence-related warrants.
The sweep was part of the department’s attempt to step up arrests in the month of October, which is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. So far this month, the department has made 271 domestic violence arrests.
“It’s not just enough to identify them,” said Dave Fisher, division chief for investigations. “We’re trying to bring them in here like the dogs they are and bring them to justice.”
The men were part of a list of 50 domestic violence suspects whom the department is trying to arrest. The group that remains at large includes two teenage suspects, one 14 and the other 16.
Police said one alarming trend they’ve noticed is a pattern of younger suspects in domestic violence cases. They offered no statistics except for anecdotal examples like the two males sought Sunday.
However, the trend reported by police comes as no surprise to Dora-Lee Larson of the Denver Domestic Violence Coordinating Council, which represents several victims advocacy groups.
“Dating violence is not that much different than domestic violence,” Larson said. “It’s a learned behavior. They see it in the music, in the movies and in the fighting at home.”
Larson added that unlike adult domestic violence, there are not as many resources devoted to adolescent victims and perpetrators.
Sonny Jackson, a police spokesman who went along on the sweep for the juvenile suspects, said the parents in both cases were not defensive with police. He said one parent did not seem surprised.
“We’re hoping in both cases that the parents turn the children in,” Jackson said.
The police department, meanwhile, has increased the number of detectives in the domestic violence unit from eight to 11.
“We can get ahead of this,” Fisher said of the stepped-up enforcement.
The effort comes after a period of several years in which the number of arrests in Denver for simple assault of all sorts, not just domestic violence, declined from 8,270 in 1998 to 6,378 in 2004, a decrease of nearly 23 percent.
Meanwhile, cases involving violent crime and domestic violence remain fairly consistent, Fisher noted. So far this year, there have been five domestic violence homicides compared with six by the same date last year.
Fisher acknowledged that the number of domestic violence cases in which charges were filed had declined in recent years. But he added that the number of convictions has been increasing.
He credited part of that trend to a new program in which patrol officers are videotaping statements from domestic violence victims at the scene of an alleged crime. The tapes help in cases where the victims later find themselves under pressure to back off their initial allegations.