There was an article that was shared on the internet (Opposing Views, Dominic Kelly. 4/21/14).It showed a photo of a severely beaten elderly male and referring to the police as brutal for the beating they gave this male. The article went on to say the male called 911 for his wife who was suffering from dementia and who broke a window. His intent was to get medical help for his wife. Apparently from the article, for some reason, the officers didn’t view the call that way and saw it as a domestic dispute, viewed the male as the assailant, directed him to get on the ground so as to subdue him and when he hesitated, he was forcefully pushed to the ground causing injuries to his face. Their tactics and use of force were depicted as brutal.
When I see an article like this, it immediately causes a stir of emotions in me. After 38 years in law enforcement of which 23 years were as a supervisor, I have investigated many complaints similar to this. Each and every time several emotions rise up. First I’m saddened that officers had to act in that way and possibly brought dishonor to our profession. But second I also know that these accusations have to be investigated and all the circumstances addressed. Lastly I always tried to see what might be improved upon to prevent similar actions should these officers have acted inappropriately.
Possible variations in the scenario confronting the officers could have contributed to their decision making. What information did the 911 operator gather and transmit to the officers in route to this incident? Was there screaming and yelling and cursing in the background or over the phone? Did the operator hear the window being broken over the phone? How did the operator transmit the call? Was it termed a sick call-ambulance needed? Or did the operator term it a domestic dispute, yelling and screaming and broken glass being heard?
Officers are trained to prepare themselves for the call for service. If they were told that this was a violent domestic dispute, they know that they will have to separate the combatants and neutralize the possible assailant by putting them on the ground and hand cuffing them until they determine who did what. If they resist they can use appropriate and superior force to overcome the resistance. (NJ AG Guidelines Use of Force).
The training they receive ,unfortunately, emphasizes that the male is the assailant and that he should be targeted immediately to remove him as a threat.( NJ. AG Guidelines,Dom. Viol. Training) In this case the male was calling to help his violent wife who was suffering from dementia. Assuming that the male was the threat they acted on this assumption and took action. The male feeling he was not the threat, stood his ground, which was deemed resisting and appropriate force was used. (NJ AG Guidelines,Use of Force)
This would most likely excuse the use of force against the male on the departmental level, but then the concern comes into play about preventing future mis-steps. Two things jump out at me with this call. First that the training of the officers conditioned them to believe the male was automatically guilty. Because in so many of the calls for domestic violence this is the case , and the decision is backed by their training, it was a safe assumption made in the few precious seconds these officers have to make that decision. For example in the NJ Law Enforcement Handbook, Larry Holtz, which reproduced the NJ Attorney General Guidelines for Domestic Violence, there were seven citations from the Attorney General depicting the male as the aggressor in domestic violence scenarios. There were, however, no citations depicting the female as the aggressor. The training and the authorization for the training was based under the full faith and credit provision of the Violence Against Women Act. (page 484, NJ Law Enforcement Handbook, Holtz).Under those circumstances it is not probable that issues concerning violence against men will be discussed. Second, they were dealing with someone who was suffering from a mental illness, someone who probably made some fantastic claims against the husband (pp 133- 155, DSMIV)and someone who actually broke the window. But because she was female they assumed she was the victim and that her claims were accurate, which they weren’t. Some would think that if that were the case, the officers would have recognized the dementia and measured their response appropriately. But sadly very few officers are trained in recognizing and dealing appropriately with mental illness(CABLE, Lt. Woody)). We hear too many times where the officers were confronted with a “deranged” mentally ill person and tragedy occurred to the victim or the officers(NAMI). My experience has shown me that there is a better way to handle this than use of force.
So what can be done to curtail future mis-steps like this one? The domestic violence training has to emphasize that it is not always the male who is the assailant. We cannot afford to act upon assumptions because past experience has taught us that or the law and legal actions have dictated that policy decisions need to put the male in that role. I have cited in past articles that statistics have shown the prevalence of female assailants in domestic situations.
Secondly, police need to receive training in recognition and proper handling of the mentally ill.(CABLE, Lt. Woody) I’m not stating that they now need to be social workers and psychologists. But they do need to know that certain actions can agitate a mentally ill person and unnecessarily escalate a situation by the careless actions of the responding officers. Some departments have opted to send officers to Crisis Intervention Training and have set up a response team to handle these situations. Union County, NJ went one step further and trained every officer in every department in crisis intervention. The cumbersome 40 hour course has now been shortened to three days of training. Training that would have saved these officers from a possible lawsuit from this incident . It certainly would have spared their names and reputations from being questioned in the press. Better to act in an appropriate manner taking proper actions based on sound training. Deliberate indifference and failure to train have been past grounds for successful litigation against police departments and their administrators(City of Canton v. Harris; Connick v. Thompson).
