Lifeline by Charles E. Corry, Ph.D.
Lifeline by Charles E. Corry, Ph.D.This site is supported and maintained by the Equal Justice Foundation.
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The 911 emergency telephone service is a lifeline and should be used in that fashion. Unfortunately, but certainly understandable from a human perspective, it is often used for everything from a missing dog to a cat up a tree, as well as in domestic arguments.
In an intimate relationship, dialing 911 is the equivalent of a nuclear attack. It may be needed but the same safeguards we use to prevent an accidental missile launch should be considered before the 911 call is made.
However unlikely it is in the heat of an argument, a person in a domestic situation should think whether they really need a nuclear attack to stop their partner, or whether they should just walk away for awhile until things cool off.
Once launched, there is no going back under current law, as many, many women have found to their utter dismay. A simple phone call can lead to a lifetime of regret, misery for the children, and extreme financial hardship. And, as in any nuclear conflict, the level of violence may well increase, leaving little but ashes.
Like a missile launch, police response isn't instantaneous, but they cannot be recalled. It will take the police anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes, or longer, to respond. If real, immediate danger exists from one's partner, it is probably better for a person to leave if they can.
If a police response is necessary, it is certainly safer to call them at a distance from the danger. No rational person would step inside a burning building to call 911 to report a fire. However, if a person can't get out, then there is the consideration of whether calling 911 will further enrage their partner and result in greater personal danger before the police can arrive.
The current laws requiring mandatory arrest and "no drop" prosecution have been found to increase the level of violence in three out of seven cities studied. That is particularly true if the male in the situation is unemployed and the couple are not married.
The problem is that people don't behave rationally when dealing with an intimate partner, particularly if there is a history of abuse in the relationship. However, if there is such a history of abuse, a person can plan a response, or leave before the next occurrence. It isn't likely that calling 911 during a crisis is the best solution a person can come up with to deal with intimate partner violence and abuse.
In a November 12, 2000, editorial in the Denver Post, Ms. Billie Stanton examined the "mandatory arrest" policy that has been in effect in Denver since 1984. She found that most domestic violence calls do not result in an arrest because police don't find probable cause of a crime when they arrive.
Ms. Stanton states that Denver police got 16,080 domestic violence calls from October 1, 1999, through September 30, 2000, but made only 4,619 arrests, or 29% of the 911 calls resulted in arrest. She claims the same has held true in other jurisdictions in Colorado in spite of state law C.R.S. § 18-6-803.6.
Demographic analyses shows that the most draconian enforcement of the DV laws in Colorado occurs in the Colorado Springs area. On that basis, we have examined Ms. Stanton's claim for the years 1990-2002 using published reports from the Colorado Springs Police Department (Table 1). The data tabulated and graphed in Table 1 bridge the period when the current mandatory arrest and no-drop policies were mandated by the state legislature in 1994.
As given in Table 1, for the years 1990-2002 there were between 10,000 and 15,000 calls for assistance in domestic disturbances each year, with between 900 and 2,000 arrests for simple assault. Domestic violence arrests are most commonly for misdemeanor third-degree assault, included under simple assaults in Table 1. Simple assaults include arrests for other than domestic violence but are not broken apart in the available uniform crime reports. An unresolvable bias is thus introduced into the available data but a reasonable estimate would be that 50% of arrests for simple assault not originate as a domestic dispute. That estimate is reinforced by the peak in such arrests evident in 1995 (Table 1), the year after the present law was passed making arrest mandatory in domestic violence cases.
Arrests for other crimes than misdemeanor third-degree assault are made in domestic situations, e.g., aggravated assault, but the numbers are not statistically significant in the available data. Nor are the DV arrests broken apart in the aggravated assault data.
Passage of the 1994 mandatory arrest law increased the arrest rate for simple assaults from 6%-9% of all domestic disturbance calls for the years 1990-1993 to 15%-18% for the years 1995-2002. Thus, when police are called there is presently only about a 15% chance that an arrest will be made, even under the current draconian laws.
The idea that passage of the 1994 law has doubled the arrest rate for domestic violence in Colorado Springs is too simplistic, however. An increase in arrests proportional only to the population surge since 1990 would suggest about 1,150 arrests for simple assault in 2000 if the 1994 domestic violence laws had not been passed. The actual number of 1,630, and the trend downward (Table 1) in arrests since the 1995 peak, suggest the law is having little long-term affect on number of arrests for simple assault.
Conversely, an increase in 911 calls proportional to the 77% population surge between the 1990 and 2000 censuses suggests there should have been approximately 14,400 such calls for domestic disturbances in 2000 (red line in Table 1). However, after peaking in 1994, the number of calls for assistance in domestic disputes has steadily dropped. In 2002 there were virtually the same number of domestic disturbance calls as in 1990. Clearly, a major impact of the 1994 domestic violence laws has been a substantial decrease in the number of 911 calls citizens make during domestic disturbances (Table 1).
Our conclusion is that the domestic violence laws have had little long-term impact on arrests but the draconian persecution of those who do call 911 deters citizens from contacting the police.
As a direct result of these draconian laws, we have moved from a time when officers were called to restore the peace to a time when police act to haul citizens to gulags and destroy families, often on the basis of mere hearsay. As a result, couples are commonly more afraid of the police and social services than they are of their partner.
Clearly, what citizens want are peace officers to settle disputes, not Gestapo-like law enforcement that destroys their lives and takes their children.
There are many other possible explanations for such a low arrest rate when 911 is called. But a lifeline isn't much good if all the lifebuoys have already been thrown over the side by thousands of people shouting: "Man overboard!" and the people in the water are more afraid of being hit by the lifebuoy than they are of drowning.
Though a woman is hardly likely to be prosecuted for false reporting, making an unjustified nuclear attack on one's partner is very likely to end the relationship. It isn't likely the termination is going to be amicable or inexpensive either.
Use 911 if you really need it, but the odds are calling 911 isn't going to solve your immediate problem, and it may well make the situation worse. As with a nuclear attack, it is Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) in most cases.
Based on FY 1997-1998 figures, 12,166 domestic violence cases were filed in Colorado state courts as a class 6 felony or lower. About 4,331 people were convicted, or 36% of those charged. It is estimated that the very large majority of those convicted pled guilty or no contest. Thus, an individual has a very substantial chance of winning if they take their case to trial. If a person obtains competent counsel, and the facts support their case, it is estimated that an individual has a better than 95% chance of acquittal in a jury trial on charges involving domestic violence.
Using the figures above, for 1997-1998 there were approximately 40,000 calls to 911 in Colorado concerning domestic violence. In response to these calls ~12,000 arrests were made, and ~4,300 people, mostly men, were convicted. There is thus about a 10% chance a call to 911 will result in a domestic violence conviction. If the person arrested can afford competent counsel, and takes the case to a jury trial, the odds of conviction after a 911 call are much less than 1%.
Conversely, we estimate that 80% to 90% of the time a call to 911 leads to a breakup of the relationship, though it may be as low as only half the time, and the breakup may not occur immediately after the first call. Thus, between 20,000 and 36,000 intimate relationships likely end in a year as a result of these calls. The results are broken homes, acrimony, heartbroken men, women, and, especially, children as a result of what may have been a reflexive moment of anger or panic.
As a guess, perhaps half of these 20,000 to 36,000 relationships might have survived if 911 had not been called. Estimates clearly show that about 80% of the couples involved in domestic violence cases want to stay together. Since probable cause is found for only about 15% of the calls, lets assume the 16,000 to 30,000 couples whose relationship could be saved come from the ~85% of the 911 calls that have no real basis. Lets further extrapolate by assuming that these couples have, on average, one child each. If our estimates are in the ballpark, we are looking at 48,000 to 90,000 individuals per year whose lives are wrecked by 911 calls (16,000 to 30,000 couples + one child per couple).
Lawyers, courts, and domestic violence and divorce industries thrive in these circumstances, but the individuals involved are destroyed.
Mutually assured destruction is no saner in an intimate relationship than between nations.
Is a nuclear weapon really what is needed in a domestic argument?
Think before you dial 911! Be certain in advance that the person you call the cops on is your enemy because it is a virtual certainty they will be after you make the call.
| EJF Home | Find Help | Help the EJF | Comments? | Get EJF newsletter | Newsletters |
| Domestic Violence Book | DV Site Map | Data tables | DV bibliography | DV index |
| Chapter 1 — The Human Problem Of Domestic Violence |
| Next — Controlling Domestic Violence Against Men by Charles Corry, Ph.D., Martin Fiebert, Ph.D., and Erin Pizzey |
| Back — The Missing Persons of Domestic Violence: Male Victims by Richard Gelles, Ph.D. |
This site is supported and maintained by the Equal Justice Foundation.
