As a domestic violence investigator with the Grenada County District Attorney’s Office, William Blackmon has heard it all. Every excuse a suspect can give in an attempt to justify his or her violent behavior, Blackmon said he’s heard it ‘once too many’ times before.
“’I don’t remember doing it,’” Blackmon relates. “’I was drunk’ and ‘She made me do it…’ Those are a few of the oldies but goodies that we hear all the time. And 95 times out of 100, it’s the man who is the aggressor over the woman.”
For 14 years, Blackmon has witnessed both sides of domestic violence – responding to the actual call as a policeman, and working toward the prosecution of the suspect as an investigator.
As an officer with the Grenada Police Department, from 1995 to 1999, Blackmon personally responded to domestic calls in an effort to protect the victim and maintain the peace. But for the last 10 years, as an investigator, he’s worked to exercise justice and put the domestic violence aggressor behind bars. Blackmon said in both instances, his job has been very challenging.
“As a patrolman, you never know what you’re going to drive up on because of all the emotions involved,” he said. “The people could be calm or they could be irate and screaming. But it’s a known fact that a domestic violence call is the most dangerous call you can answer because you never know what’s going to happen.”
Captain Tommy Bibbs of the Winona Police Department (WPD) agreed. In fact, Bibbs himself was assaulted when he responded to a domestic violence call in July 2009.
“We had a guy, who about nine years ago, had been charged with a felony in Greenwood, because he shot at his wife,” Bibbs said. “And since that time, she’s remarried. So, we get a call that he was trying to break in her house one morning about 6 a.m., and when we arrived, he said he wanted to talk to his son, and he was not going to jail. And he kicked me in the chest and in the face.”
Bibbs, a 13-year veteran of the WPD, also said getting a victim to press charges in a domestic violence assault can be frustrating because of the emotional bond involved.
“I went to a call where the man hit his girl in the head with a pair of vice grips and she was bleeding all over the place, and she didn’t want to press charges,” Bibbs said. “And I’ve seen a lot of cases end the same: The man gets into a rage, he assaults the woman, the woman calls police, and then they go through the ‘Honeymoon Phase,’ where the woman is so in love with the man she doesn’t want to press charges. I’ve even seen where a woman has called the police on her husband and when they got there, she turned on the police. A woman will kill you quicker than a man.”
During his tenure as an officer, Blackmon said he’s seen many victims severely beaten and left for dead after a domestic violence attack. He’s also seen the victims who were brutally murdered at the hands of an intimate partner.
“When you get repeat calls like that time and time again,” he said, “it seems like whatever you’re doing is not working because the couple keeps fighting. But as an officer, the most you can do is protect the victim. But the reality is people are free to do whatever they want to do, which in most cases means going back to the aggressor. So, I needed to figure out what more could I do to help them.”
As an investigator funded by the Violence Against Women‘s Act, Blackmon has attended numerous workshops and seminars on domestic violence and he’s trained hundreds of police officers on how to respond to and assimilate a domestic violence situation. He’s also responsible for putting together the criminal case to bring a suspected domestic violence aggressor to justice.
“If it’s doing a background check on the suspects, re-investigating a case, gathering evidence, questioning witnesses or doing whatever paperwork may be involved, I do it,” Blackmon said. “I do whatever it takes to get a case to court.”
A change in the law
Representing court cases in seven counties, including: Grenada, Carroll, Montgomery, Winston, Webster, Choctaw and Attala, Blackmon said within the last few years, the laws on domestic violence in Mississippi have improved for the benefit of the victim.
“In the 1990s before there was a domestic violence law there was only a simple assault charge and an aggravated assault charge, regardless of what the family relationship was and whether or not there was bodily injury or not,” he said. “And in 1992, simple assault and aggravated assault were added into the domestic violence law, and that adds the element of the family structure to the charge. And then there’s another element that deals with the suspect’s criminal history.”
• Simple assault is defined as attempts to cause bodily injury to another person whether purposely or through negligence; and attempts by physical menace to put another person in fear of impending bodily harm, and carries the maximum penalty of $500 and/or six months in jail.
• Aggravated assault carries the same definition but with an “extreme disregard for the value of human life.” The maximum penalty is 20 years in jail and a $5,000 fine.
According to Mississippi Code Section 97-3-7(3), if a person has two prior misdemeanor convictions for simple domestic violence, a third domestic violence charge, against the same or another victim, within five years, can be a felony punishable by no less than five years incarceration regardless of the extent of the victim’s injuries.
In 2006, the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office established a Domestic Violence Division with the following objectives: (1) Establishing uniform protection orders and laws for domestic violence victims, (2) Giving victims easier access to the court system and (3) Preventing domestic violence in the state of Mississippi from escalating.
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood said an integral part of that domestic violence division involves the training of the law enforcement agents and courtroom personnel.
“We have to properly train our law enforcement agents,” Hood said, “since a domestic related call is the highest level of violence that you can send an officer on. We’ve also developed a booklet for them to keep in their vehicle that gives statutes on how to go in and stabilize a violent situation, how to determine probable cause, how to determine the principal aggressor and how to respond. And our court clerks,” he continued, “they really are the hands on people when it comes to dealing with a victim that’s very upset. And the clerks need to make sure that the victim understands what they’re signing. They’re the ones on the front line and we have to keep them educated as to the laws while they’re out there.”
“We really appreciate the training that the attorney general’s office gives us,” said Karen Carter, Justice Court Clerk for Montgomery County. “Because if there is the slightest technicality in court when it comes to domestic violence, the perpetrator can walk.”
In addition to criminal remedies, victims of domestic abuse can also obtain other types of legal protection from the court system. Civil domestic abuse protection orders can be issued by municipal, justice, county and chancery courts. One important aspect about protection orders is that while civil in nature, a violation of a domestic violence protection order is a crime and the offender can be arrested.
Additionally, the laws on civil orders of protection for victims of domestic violence were recently amended by the Legislature. Under former law, temporary orders could only be issued for 10 days, and in Senate Bill 2967, that time period was extended to 30 days.
”The changes enacted by the Legislature during the 2009 Session will be very beneficial to the ability of victims to access the courts,” said Heather Wagner of the attorney general’s office. “Quite often, a victim of domestic violence who is seeking the protection of the courts does not have the financial ability to retain an attorney, leaving this person at a disadvantage when trying to access the court. It is simply quite challenging for a lay person to navigate through the system. The use of standardized forms will assist those individuals. And these forms are designed to be fill-in-the-blank, and they can be obtained from the court clerk’s office.”
Other changes to subsections (3) and (4) of Section 97-3-7 (simple and aggravated domestic violence) now includes children who are living in the home, but may not be related to the abuser, such as the children of an unmarried intimate partner. These children are often victims of abuse, but under the old definition, an assault against such a child was not considered, domestic violence, for which charges or an arrest could result. And statistics indicate that more than 15 million children in the United States live in families where domestic violence occurs.
”Recognizing a gap in the protections afforded by our laws, we asked the Legislature to address the fact that many times, the children living in the home were not related to the offender by blood or marriage, but were in a similar position of danger to those children who were related,” said Wagner. “And one of the most tragic aspects of domestic abuse is the impact on the children in the home. It is well documented that children who are exposed to violence in their homes, whether they are direct victims of abuse or just witnesses of the abuse, are much more likely to find themselves in violent relationships as an adult than children who grow up in homes free from violence.”
Economic impact of domestic violence
William Blackmon said domestic violence is no longer a family or a personal issue, but it’s become a worldwide epidemic that affects the entire community.
“We all have to pay for it,” he said. “We have to pay for the perpetrator to go to jail. The person arrested misses work, that’s a decrease in taxes. The police have to constantly go to the home, that’s taxpayer money. The person abused can’t go to work that’s lost wages. And when certain crimes happen in your neighborhood, that doesn’t ever look good. So, it just hurts all around.”
According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), the costs of health-related care for women domestically abused in 2003 exceeded $5.8 billion. Of this total, nearly $4.1 billion was for victims requiring direct medical and mental health care services.
Productivity and earnings lost due to Intimate Partner Violence account for almost $1.8 billion annually. Intimate partner violence victims lose nearly 8.0 million days of paid work each year – the equivalent of more than 32,000 full time jobs and nearly 5.6 million days of household productivity.
The NCIPC also estimated the annual cost for caring for battered women in the United States at $1.8 billion, while a study by UNICEF put estimates between $5 and $10 billion. In 2003, violence against women cost companies within the United States $72.8 million annually due to lost productivity, according to statistics from the CDC and the NCIPC.
“Domestic violence doesn’t benefit anybody because it‘s nothing but a crime,” Blackmon said. “And anytime a woman is abused, if it’s just one time, it’s one too many. And it has a negative effect on the entire community.”
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood said oftentimes, co-workers or other personal care providers are the first to realize when a woman is being abused by her partner. Signs of domestic abuse and preventive measures will be discussed in part four of this series.
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