Tactical reminders for responding to domestics

Detective Jim Smith is a 25-year veteran of a major department, and he’s seen a lot. But his voice still gives way to an element of surprise when he talks about a routine domestic disturbance call he responded to a few years back.

“Same old situation,” he says, “A lady calls, old man’s kicking her ass.” When Smith and his partner arrived at the house, the woman was tearful and thankful they showed up.

But moments later, the scene turned on its head: “The lady jumped on my partner’s back then fell off and came clawing at me. I used countermeasures and punched her in the ribs – this woman was big, you know, buxom - couldn’t feel a thing!” Smith recalls. “Long story short, the husband gets taken out on a stretcher and the lady’s in tears again.”

In other words, beware the ho-hum, break-it-up-and-leave attitude of domestic disturbance calls.

“You think you’re going to be some big hero, but you ain’t nothing,” Smith says with a laugh.

______________________

Domestic disturbance calls, as with traffic stops, pose a serious threat to officer safety. The sheer number and nature of these calls – what many consider routine – make it easy to downplay their potential volatility.

“Domestic disturbance calls are a recipe for excessive force claims, and a recipe for injuries,” says nationally recognized trainer Dave Grossi. (AP Photo/AJ Mast)

Dave Grossi, a law enforcement trainer and consultant, says that 30% of all excessive force claims come from domestic violence calls, because, face it, you’re on their turf: The unknowns outweigh the knowns. You don’t know layout of the rooms, who else is in the house, let alone what kinds of weapons there are, or where.

Add intoxicants to the mix (meaning, among other things, pain compliance and physical control techniques might not work and/or the subjects won’t be able to process language), and you’ve got yourself a tinderbox.

Grossi recommends that three officers respond to every domestic disturbance call, but knows this isn’t always possible. The obvious failing of two officers in contact/cover roles is that when subjects are taken to separate rooms, neither officer is covered. (This is especially risky for an officer in the kitchen, which is a bonanza of edge-weapons and dangerous appliances.)

Between two officers, it’s critical to maintain an unobstructed pathway and line of sight. But again, Grossi says, “It’s best to have a third officer there who is not making contact, and can cover both of you.”

Another major danger, albeit psychological, stems from the changeable nature of the relationship between the “principles” (the people in the house) and you. Grossi calls this “shifting roles” in a triangulated scenario: Picture three points, with the abuser at one, the victim at another and you, the rescuing officer, at the last.

The moment you make it clear this is not just a warning, that you are taking someone to jail, the allegiance of the victim (let’s say the wife or girlfriend) may change as she watches you cuff her boyfriend and realizes, oh no, he’ll have to spend the night in jail, and I’ll have to go to the arraignment tomorrow and our credit card is maxed out, etc.

The entire triangle shifts: The victim becomes the rescuer, the abuser becomes the victim, and you become the abuser, and the threat to your physical safety ramps up.

For this reason, Jim says, “The permutations of these relationships are deep and serious.”

Intel

The best way to protect yourself on any domestic disturbance call is to gather as much information as possible every time you go to a house. But when you’re in the car running hot to a domestic, you can’t always focus on your in-car computer.

Street Survival instructor Betsy Brantner-Smith says it’s important to keep the dispatcher on the line. And the dispatcher needs to have the caller on the line, feeding you information based on questions like:
• How many people are in the house?
• Are there weapons in the house?
• Have neighbors showed up?
• Has he/she (the absuser) done this before?
• WHO IS ABUSING WHOM? Any situation is possible, including adult children abusing their elderly parents; the wife battering her husband, abuse between a gay couple, etc. You never know what to expect.

It is critical that an officer make no assumptions: Don’t make assumptions based on past experience, even experience with a specific household (callers you’re on a first-name basis with, because remember the role-shifting phenomenon).

Radio other officers and tell each other everything you need to know about this family’s background, i.e., there’s warrant out for the husband’s arrest; this is their third marriage; their kid got kicked out of school, there’s an aggressive dog leashed in the front yard. Take into account the capability of people in the house to be dangerous, based on past intel-gethering (this guy’s a former quarterback).

What seem like inconsequential facts AREN’T.

(When it comes to report writing afterwards, don’t skimp on the details. Get all the facts and “minor” observations down. Again, don’t let the frequency of domestic calls breed complacency when it comes to recording all the information that you gather at each call. A report needs to be written whether you make an arrest or not, because you’re probably going to go back there again – possibly for a bad beating or homicide. Detailed reports are CRITICAL.)

Once you have a handle on what goes on in a house, the next time you go to that house, the key will be sensing what’s changed. If you can find the gap, the difference (a Swiss Army knife that’s no longer on the coffee table, an unusually quiet child) that’s what you pay attention to, because that’s your blind spot.

The Safe Approach

With the dispatcher standing by, you should start focusing on your approach. This should happen well in advance of your reaching the house. You want to be stealthy, so consider the following:
• Where am I going to park? Probably a fair distance from the house so the cruiser doesn’t draw attention.
• What’s going on in the front and BACK of the house?
• Are you going in alone?
• Do you want to wait for back-up? (Do you have back-up?)

As you make your way up to the house, LISTEN -- especially, for things like screaming, threats, glass breaking, children – signs that you would need to rush in immediately. Listen for voices, and see if you can determine how many adults are the in the house -- basically, get the lay of the land into focus as much as possible.

“Listen for tone of voice, emotional pitch, and content of converstation,” says Smith. “Slow down, get literal, and really hear what they’re talking about.”

Whether you knock or just walk in, remember to announce yourself, stand to the side and BE READY to respond. Brantner-Smith says these scenarios are complicated: “You’ve got to use your intel-gathering skills, tactics, and gift of gab – the ability to deal with people and verbally convince people to do things they may not want to do.”

Controlling a subject often means cuffing him/her. “The key,” says Brantner-Smith, is to explain your actions by saying, “I’m handcuffing you for your safety and mine;” remind them they’re not under arrest, it’s just a safety precaution as you complete the initial house search and begin to sort the situation out.

And what of the sorting out, the he said/she said?

Many officers really don’t like domestic calls because they’re forced to play social worker – it just doesn’t feel like police work. Plus you’ve been there a hundred times before, and might be wondering if all this mediation and voice modulation is worth it.

Gary Monreal of the New Berlin, (WI ) PD admits, “The frequency can get monotonous.” He says you see the same disagreement over and over – maybe you’re fighting about the same thing with your spouse – and it’s frustrating. “Police officers are people too. We want to help them.”

While empathy’s a good thing, it can be tricky when two officers arrive and each of them takes one person into a room to hear their version of events. When the officers reconvene, they’ve potentially “taken the side” of whomever they talked to.

“At this point,” Monreal says, “You have to take a step back.” Mediating between family members and dealing with all the complex and chronic dynamics that, in truth, may never be resolved, can be extremely frustrating.

Lack of discretion due to mandatory arrest laws is another frustration officers talk about. Adopted by 23 states, these laws require the arrest and custody of any person believed to be the “primary physical aggressor” in a domestic assault if there is evidence of a visible injury.

And while these laws, enacted to protect victims of domestic violence, look great on paper, they are not always necessary to cool a situation off, and can in fact, frequently exacerbate animosity between family members, and toward the responding officer.

“Say you’ve smoothed things over, but someone still has to be booked,” says Monreal. “The victim will turn on you. She’ll say ‘I didn’t call you to arrest my husband, I called you to keep the peace!’” All the work you’ve done establishing great rapport with these people goes right down the drain.

Add in the financial burden of the arrest, jail time, possible loss of job, or children who have to watch their father being carted off, and the emotions can boil over. In this situation, everybody feels powerless and frustrated. “I don’t want to be a referee who potentially makes things worse,” says Monreal.

But on the upside, according to Jim Smith, “You do what you can to improve the situation. A peace officer should always leave people a little better than when they got there.”

______________________

Every job can be repetitive, and police work is no exception. Most domestic dispute calls probably feel like you’ve hit rewind then pressed play on the same tape: One person’s outside pacing, one person’s crying inside the door, a child is running around with a mysterious bruise.

But keep vigilant.

“Making assumptions and not taking intel -- present and past -- are the worst blunders a cop can make on these calls,” says Smith, who finishes the thought: “When he comes up with a gun and a hostage, wouldn’t you like a little info on what makes his world turn?”