April 17, 2006

Mandatory Arrest

Law enforcement officers have traditionally been given the authority to arrest or detain a person, without a warrant, based on the two prong theory that (1) there is evidence that a serious crime occurred and (2) the belief that the accused person may have committed the crime.

What makes a domestic violence arrest unique and different from all other arrests is that officers do not need to provide any evidence that the accused person may [probable cause] be guilty. Officers need only to establish that some type of a domestic violence incident occurred.

Mandatory domestic violence arrest policies dictate that officers must make an arrest for all domestic violence incidents, regardless how minor the incident, without any evidence concerning who committed [initiated] the incident and it ignores the needs and desires of the victim. Mandatory arrest is unprecedented in the annuals of criminal justice because it ignores both the victim and the accused rights.

Placing the cart [an event] in front of the horse [individual rights] has no precedent nor is it replicated anywhere else in the criminal justice system. In the beginning domestic violence advocates demanded that domestic violence incidents to be treated similar to all other crimes and in the end they demand it be treated differently from any other crimes.

Who To Arrest

Officers some times respond to minor domestic violence incidents and discover that that the abuse is minor, mutual and no one is injured. Faced with mandatory or preferred arrest policies and being unable to provide any evidence concerning who may have initiated the incident, dual arrests were made.

Because of mandatory arrest policies and the fact that women can be as physically assaultive as men the numbers of dual arrests or arrests of women who did initiated the assault rose to 35% in some communities.

One National Institute of Justice sponsored study, Analysis of Unexamined Issues in the Intimate Partner Homicide Decline documents that during the period of the study the number of arrests for females increased 446%.

Ignoring Diversity and Individual Needs

Other than for domestic violence, mandatory arrest is avoided like the plague for many reasons. Mandatory arrest causes officers to ignore the complex context and circumstances of a specific event, it demands that officers ignore the multifaceted diversity of incidents and demands that officers do not listen to the needs and desires of individual victims.

Domestic violence advocates have somehow managed to convince our public policy makers to implement mandatory domestic violence policies and procedures that are blatantly biased, prejudiced and perhaps unconstitutional.

Ideological feminists [they are people, agencies or organizations who are more concerned with women’s rights than victim or civil rights] ignore academic empirical studies in favor of their ideological belief that domestic violence is caused by sexism and the oppression of women. Faced with the ever increasing numbers of females being arrested, these advocates failed to find fault with mandatory arrest, they simply blamed law enforcement for arresting the wrong person.

The Ideological Response

Domestic violence advocates and public policy makers implemented law enforcement domestic violence training programs that proffer that domestic violence is caused by male norms and mores and a societal belief system that allows men to beat, batter and oppress women.

These primary or dominant aggressor training programs instruct officers to expect it will be the man who is guilty. Officers are also trained to ignore who initiated or began the violence.

Most troubling is that officers are trained that when there is little to no evidence that an “incident” took place and little to no evidence concerning “guilt,” an arrest still can be made predicated on any of the following:

Who appears to be at most risk of possible victimization once you leave?
Who appears to pose the most danger once you leave?
Who is the most in danger of being injured?
Who appears most capable of inflicting harm once you leave?
Who appears capable of using the most violence?

If the above is not enough to convince officers who “should be arrested” the “primary or dominant aggressor” training model often lists the negative effects that an arrest could have on women. Apparently advocates believe that there are no negative effects for men.

Negative Effects

Criminal justice data documents that blacks are arrested and incarcerated in numbers far greater than whites for selling drugs. There are no empirical studies that document blacks sell or use drugs far more often than whites.

Would it be acceptable to have a training program that dictates when officers know that someone is selling drugs, however, when the officers arrive at the scene and there is little to no evidence of guilt, the officers should arrest the black person based on criminal justice data and the ideological held beliefs of a small group of people?

Richard L. Davis served in the United States Marine Corps from 1960 to 1964. He is a retired lieutenant from the Brockton, Massachusetts police department. He has a graduate degree in liberal arts from Harvard University and a second in criminal justice from Anna Maria College. He is a member of the International Honor Society of Historians and the American Society of Criminology. He is a college instructor for Quincy College at Plymouth, MA in Criminology, Criminal Justice and Domestic Violence. He is the vice president for Family Nonviolence, Inc. in Fairhaven, MA. He is also the vice president for the Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women.

He is an independent consultant for criminal justice domestic violence policies, procedures, and programs. He is the author of Domestic Violence: Facts and Fallacies by Praeger publishers and has written numerous articles for newspapers, journals, and magazines concerning the issue of domestic violence. He has columns concerning domestic violence at http://www.policeone.com, and http://www.nycop.com, is a distance learner instructor in Introduction to Criminal Justice and Domestic Violence for the Online Police Academy and has a website. He and Kim Eyer have a domestic violence website The Cop and the Survivor.

He lives in Plymouth, Massachusetts with his wife the youngest of five children. He experienced domestic violence professionally for 21 years as a police officer and personally as a child and as an adult. In his retirement he continues to use his education, experience, and training to help the children, women, and men who have had to endure violence from those who profess to love them. He may be reached here.

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