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Sep 8, 2009 10:32 pm US/Central
Good Question: Why Are Domestic Calls Dangerous?
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) ―
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Police officers and training specialists we spoke with identify three common issues that cause domestic situations to be dangerous: emotion, unpredictability, and location.
CBS
When a police officer responds to a call for help, it can always be potentially dangerous. But when you ask many officers what calls provoke the most fear, it's not a shooting or a bank robbery. Often they fear domestic violence calls. So what makes domestic calls so dangerous?
"You can have a husband and a wife that hate each other and a love each other at the same time. When you go to arrest somebody, the other person turns on you. I've had it happen to me," said Champlin Police Officer Kevin Wagman.
"It's unpredictable passion," according to Minneapolis Police Sergeant Jesse Garcia. "Some of these situations have a vibe of "If I can't have this person, no one will," and can end violently.
Police officers and training specialists we spoke with identify three common issues that cause domestic situations to be dangerous: emotion, unpredictability, and location.
Police arrive often when the emotion is at the boiling point.
"It has gone on and one and on and somebody's sick and tired of it," said Mylon Masson, Director of the Criminal Justice & Law Enforcement program at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, herself a former police officer.
"Domestics could be a fight that was going on for three hours, and someone finally called," said Wegman.
Domestics are unpredictable compared to other calls for help, because they are almost always in progress. When police are called to a report of a shooting, the shooting has often ended.
"You know people are going to be there. You know it's at least two people," said Masson.
And you don't know who else will be arriving, according to Garcia.
"It's still evolving. Ex-husbands show up, ex-boyfriends, current boyfriends," he explained.
The location can also be a factor, according to Masson, because domestic calls are almost always to a small, confined home.
"They know everything about their place, where everything's hidden, you don't. Everything's unknown," said Masson.
"You cannot believe how many weapons are in a home. You go into a kitchen, how many knives do you have? How many glasses do you have? There are tons of weapons that can be used against you," she explained.
These situations come up very frequently. According to St. Paul Police spokesman Sgt. Paul Schnell, St. Paul responded to 3425 domestic-related calls for service in 2009 as of August 15. That's a 12 percent increase from 2008, and an average of 15 domestic calls a day.
In Minnesota,
the law is clear under what circumstances officers have to make an arrest.
"If there's an assault an arrest must be made, and sometimes the spouse doesn't want that to happen," said Wegman. "They almost bond together against the police."
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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