Police receive new guidelines for domestic violence, sexual assault cases
21st December 2015 · 0 Comments
By Della Hasselle
Contributing Writer
When convenience store clerk Sara Reedy was 19, a serial sex offender sexually assaulted her at gunpoint.
Reedy did everything an assault victim is supposed to do, according to court documents. She reported the crime to police, underwent a forensic exam, and gave statements about the assault to hospital and law enforcement authorities.
Regardless, she said, the detective assigned to her case doubted her story.
Worse, Detective Frank Evanson accused her of false reporting and stealing from the store – charges that were only dropped after her assailant was arrested in a different case, and admitted to sexually assaulting her and committing the theft she was wrongly charged of.
“His attitude became very aggressive toward me,” Reedy said about Evanson to the Senate during a special committee in 2010. “After only meeting Detective Evanson two times, I had lost hope of my attacker being caught because of Detective Evanson’s unwillingness to believe my story.”
Women’s advocates say Reedy was the victim of gender biasing amongst police. She was a resident of the Township of Cranberry, Pa. when the crime happened in 2004, but history shows that biased law enforcement has long been documented as a problem around the country.
That includes New Orleans, where in 2012 the U.S. Department of Justice entered a consent decree with the New Orleans Police Department, outlining among other problems a “historic failure to appropriately respond to violence against women.”
To address the nationwide issue, the DOJ on Tuesday issued what advocates called a “groundbreaking” new guidance to law enforcement agencies, detailing exactly how certain police responses to victims of domestic violence or sexual assault cases violate civil rights.
The framework, which provides a blueprint for how to assess victims’ needs, calls on local police departments to examine their practices and policies that disproportionately impact women and LGBTQ people.
Not only are police now asked to address biases and stereotypes, but they are ordered to treat all victims with respect, investigate sexual assault and domestic violence cases thoroughly and appropriately classify those reports.
Law enforcement officers are also asked to refer victims to appropriate services, properly identify assailants in domestic violence cases, hold officers who commit assault responsible and maintain and review data for all relevant cases.
Carol Tracy, Executive Director of the Women’s Law Project, called the guidance “unprecedented.”
“It takes a lot of hard work to undo centuries of deeply ingrained attitudes and beliefs about gender, race, sexual orientation and gender expression,” Tracy said at a DOJ announcing the guidance.
Investigating gender bias
Last week’s announcement comes on the heels of recent DOJ investigations in New Orleans, as well as Puerto Rico; Missoula, Montana; and Maricopa County, Arizona; all which uncovered gender-biased policing.
Generally, the federal agency found local police departments systemically failed to properly investigate domestic violence and sexual assault cases. Nor did they hold fellow police officers accountable when they commit domestic or sexual violence, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The impacts were widespread. In the U.S., over one million women are sexually assaulted each year. More than a third of all women are subjected to rape physical violence or stalking in their lifetime, with women of color disproportionately affected.
“Domestic violence-related calls constitute the single largest category of calls received by police departments, so how police officers respond to domestic violence and sexual assault has a huge impact on the lives of women, families, and communities across the United States,” said Sandra Park, senior staff attorney in the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. “Police practices can either help end the cycle of violence or they can perpetuate it.”
Before the investigations took place, the ACLU had done their own reporting, asking women advocates to share stories about improper policing in domestic violence and sexual assault cases this year.
The result was what the organization called “overwhelming.”
More than 900 people in all 50 states of America responded to the call, underscoring a failure of police to properly investigate certain cases relating to women. In general, the ACLU found that even when an assault clearly qualified as criminal, women survivors often faced disbelief, victim-blaming, and hostility from law enforcement.
“Police are reluctant to believe women when they are being abused, especially if they are women of color, poor women, under the influence of substances or have mental health problems,” one respondent said, according to the report.
That person, who remained anonymous in the report, had a client that was “profoundly disoriented” due to a concussion inflicted on her by her boyfriend. The police wrote that she was drunk because her speech was unclear due to the head injury, and arrested her as well as her partner.
“The police seem very taken by the idea of ‘good victims’ vs. ‘bad victims’, the testimony continued. “In order to be a ‘good victim’ a victim needs to not be angry or defend herself but also to be present as a good woman.”
There were dozens of similar narratives in the report, researched beginning in April. Overall, clients complained not only of bias against women, but also noted a multi-discriminatory culture with perpetuated bias against the LGBTQ community, against the impoverished and against immigrants or non-English speakers.
The ACLU survey found that an overwhelming majority of respondents, 88 percent, reported that police “sometimes” or “often” do not believe survivors, or blamed them for the violence.
Another 69 percent reported that police were biased against women; 54 percent felt police are biased against immigrants; 58 percent reported bias against LGBTQ-identified people and 66 percent of respondents said there was a general bias against poor people.
Respondents also complained about treatment towards African Americans, Native Americans, youth survivors, and survivors with mental health or drug abuse problems.
In a letter written in July, the ACLU and 180 other civil rights and anti-violence groups sought DOJ guidance on gender-biased policing, pointing out that domestic violence calls account for 15 to more than 50 percent of all calls received by police.
“Providing guidance to law enforcement on constitutional and effective policing of domestic violence and sexual assault is a critical next step in reforming and improving our criminal justice system,” the letter read.
Violence Against Women Act
The guidelines issued Tuesday by the DOJ can be traced back to work started in the 1990s, when Congress recognized the “severity of violence against women” and a need for a national strategy.
In 1991, then-Senator Joe Biden became well-known for his comments about a culture of looking the other way, where domestic violence and sexual assault were treated by many as private matters outside scope of the law.
“It is still easier to convict a car thief than a rapist [and] authorities are more likely to arrest a man for parking tickets than for beating his wife,” Biden said then.
That year, advocates told Congress the main reason more victims didn’t come forward to report their attackers is because they lacked confidence with the criminal justice system.
Three years later, Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act, which says to hold offenders accountable and provides for services for victims.
The 20th anniversary of VAWA was celebrated last September, and while Vice President Biden took note of the country’s successes regarding the marginalization of women, he said several challenges still existed regarding the prevention of domestic violence and sexual assault.
To that end, the White House released “1 is 2 Many, Twenty Years Fighting Violence Against Women and Girls,” a report noting that women remain at risk as the rates of violence against women remained high and sex biased continue to permeate the criminal justice system.
On December 15, advocates said the DOJ’s actions were the next step in a renewed effort to address systemic bias in the justice system and repair trust between victims and police.
“There should be no place in 21st century policing for explicit bias of any kind,” Tracy said. “Acknowledging the deep seeds of implicit bias is more challenging and complex, but necessary in responding to the diversity and changing norms of 21st-Century America.”
This article originally published in the December 21, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
