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She Didn’t Want Her Boyfriend to Go to Jail. So They Sent Her to Jail Instead.

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Across the country, domestic violence survivors are punished by the criminal justice system. But 23-year-old Cleopatra Harrison is fighting back.


Large dark bruises on the front and side of her neck consistent with having been choked.” “Swelling to the right side of her forehead as if it had been hit with something or on something.” “Scratches on her chest and on the back of her neck consistent with having been in a struggle.”


Columbus, Georgia police officer Michael Lincoln jotted notes as he spoke with 22-year-old Cleopatra Harrison at her home June 10, 2016. Cleopatra lived with her boyfriend, she said, and they’d gotten into a fight when he got home the night before because she hadn’t done the dishes. He choked her against the wall, she told Lincoln, then threw her to the ground, continuing to choke her until she began to black out. Desperate to escape, she said she grabbed one of his hands and bent it backward, trying to break it, and wriggled free.


Her boyfriend had left the house and was probably at work now, Cleopatra told the officer. At his work, Cleopatra’s boyfriend told Lincoln that Cleopatra had started the fight, but admitted he’d pushed and punched her. “His wrist was swollen,” Lincoln wrote in his report, “which adds credence to Ms. Harrison’s account.” Lincoln arrested the boyfriend and booked him into the Muscogee County jail, and he was charged with aggravated assault.


Cleopatra had called the police for protection, but when she found out her boyfriend had been arrested and charged, she was unhappy :)disdain:). For one thing, she made $12.18 an hour cleaning the mess hall at the U.S. Army base Fort Benning, but her hours were irregular, and her biweekly paycheck was usually $295. Her boyfriend made more than she did and she couldn’t afford the rent by herself. She decided to go to her boyfriend’s hearing and ask the prosecutor to drop the charges.


“They told me it was up to my choice if I wanted to come to court or not,” Cleopatra told me during an interview in her lawyer’s office. “I was told if I wanted to drop the charges I had to be there.” She pulled her hands into the sleeves of her sweatshirt, wincing at the memory of what happened next.


Cleopatra assumed the hearing wouldn’t take long, and had shown up to the Columbus Recorder’s Court on June 14 in her street clothes, planning to run home after court to change into her janitorial uniform and hairnet. She told her boss that she would be in for her shift right after the hearing.


When her boyfriend’s case was called, Lincoln testified that he had witnessed Cleopatra’s injuries, then Judge Michael Cielinski asked Cleopatra if she wanted to speak. Yes, she’d called the police, Cleopatra explained, and yes, the assault had taken place, but no, she didn’t want to press charges.


“There’s a $150 assessment since you now want to dismiss the case,” Cielinski told Cleopatra.


“At first I didn’t understand,” Cleopatra said, so she turned to sit back down in the gallery where rows of people waited for their cases to be called. On the official court recording, Cielinski barks, “Ma’am, get back here! You go with the deputy.” She was led to the clerk’s office, where she explained to the deputy that she would get paid the following day but didn’t have the money at that moment. The clerk asked Cleopatra to sign a paper giving her a seven-day grace period to pay the fee in full before she would be arrested and charged with a crime. Cleopatra took the obligation seriously, and made a mental note to set aside money to pay the fine. Then she started to leave the courthouse, unaware that anything was wrong.


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The Columbus, Georgia, Recorder’s Court where Cleopatra Harrison was arrested.

Cleopatra had been charged what a lawsuit filed by the Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR) called a “victim’s fee.” A Columbus city ordinance stated that there’s “[a] minimum charge of $50.00 for dismissing a case in recorder’s court, such charge to be paid by the prosecuting witness that refuses to prosecute the case.” But the lawsuit argued the fee was illegal under Georgia state law, which “does not permit such fees unless there is a finding by a judge that the alleged victim’s original complaint was both ‘unfounded and malicious.’” Nothing about Cleopatra’s report — or the police reports of a handful of other domestic violence victims involved in the lawsuit — was deemed unfounded or malicious.


There’s no information on how many courts in the U.S. assess victim’s fees because victims don’t report them. Cleopatra didn’t know the fee she was charged could be illegal. The Southern Center only discovered that victim’s fees were being assessed in Cielinski’s courtroom when an investigator working with the SCHR noticed a disturbing trend – woman after woman was being charged a fine for making a decision not to testify in their abuser’s criminal case. Based on court observation by the SCHR, fees were often assessed to domestic violence victims, who ask to drop charges more often than victims of other crimes because they know their attacker. (Men are also often victims of domestic violence, but in this particular case all the victims were women.) The SCHR attorneys recognized it as a practice that was taking advantage of people who were not represented by counsel and approached Cleopatra about being part of the lawsuit. The Southern Center filed it as a class action suit because, according to the suit, “hundreds of people are subjected to the illegal policies described in this complaint, but few are likely to have the time, legal acumen, and resources to pursue the claims at issue in this case on their own.”


The fee wasn’t the only way Cleopatra was victimized that day in the courthouse. She should’ve been allowed to leave — she signed for the grace period after all. Instead Lincoln asked Cleopatra where she was going and grabbed her by the arm.


“What have I done?” Cleopatra said.


“You lied to me,” Lincoln said, according to Cleopatra. He pushed her face against the cement wall and handcuffed her, twisting her arms behind her back.


“Why you putting me in handcuffs?” she asked. She was confused; she had never committed a crime in her life.


“You didn’t tell me all of the story,” Lincoln said.


Cleopatra was pushed into the police cruiser only 90 minutes after she’d walked into the Columbus Recorder’s Court to attend her boyfriend’s hearing. Now she was the one being taken away to the Muscogee County jail, where she was photographed, stripped of her jeans, shirt, bra, and cell phone, and given a jail jumpsuit to wear.


Cleopatra’s arrest report says she was jailed for unspecified “false information,” — Lincoln wrote, “Subject lied to me on scene, then admitted it in court,” with no further evidence indicated. The lie, it seems Lincoln was claiming, is that by asking to drop charges, Cleopatra was admitting she wasn’t actually assaulted.


The strong-arming of domestic violence victims to press charges and testify against their attackers has been an unwelcome side effect of the criminalization of domestic violence. In the past, domestic violence was mostly seen as a private matter within a couple, not an issue for law enforcement. Marital rape wasn’t outlawed in all 50 states until 1993. But since the victims’ rights movement began in the 1990s, law enforcement and domestic violence advocacy groups have increasingly relied on the criminal justice system to protect women from their abusers. Twenty-one states now have some version of mandatory arrest laws, which require any domestic violence call with probable cause to believe an assault took place to end in an arrest. (Georgia leaves arrest up to the officer’s discretion.) A 2001 study found that 66 percent of prosecutors’ offices have “no-drop” policies, which require prosecutors to continue with domestic violence cases even when the victim asks for the charges to be dropped. The victim’s fee Cleopatra paid is a version of a no-drop policy — the latest of these policies to come to light thanks to the Southern Center lawsuit, even though it’s likely been in effect for years.

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The Muscogee County Jail where Cleopatra Harrison was held.

The fee Cleopatra was assessed also comes with a city and county tax surcharge, and if someone cannot pay upfront, they’re charged extra. By the time Cleopatra paid her fee 24 hours later, it had increased to $212.50 — almost her entire biweekly paycheck. “If I don’t have the money,” Cleopatra says, “I don’t have the money.”



After her arrest, Cleopatra says she told the intake officer that she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and should not be placed in “gen pop” where she would be around a lot of other women. Her request was disregarded, and she was placed in a crowded gen pop area where female residents are double-bunked. She nearly had a panic attack. Without access to a lawyer, she huddled in her cot, avoiding the “nasty” water and food, experiencing increasing anxiety at being around so many people. She was scared and confused: Why would they put her here if they knew about her condition? She’d missed her work shift; would she be fired? Her body ached from being slammed against the wall. Although she’d alleged he’d abused her, she hoped her boyfriend would bail her out. She needed him.


Cleopatra did call the police after she was attacked, but she’d been surprised that Lincoln showed up with plans to make an arrest. When Lincoln asked for her boyfriend’s work address, Cleopatra says, “I thought they were going to talk to him to see what was going on, because normally they’d want to hear both sides. But unfortunately, they just went ahead and locked him up.” The thing that upsets her most is that she — the victim, the one who called for help — wasn’t given a choice in the matter.


This is the argument against mandatory arrest laws, no-drop policies, and victim’s fees: They ignore what the victim believes is in her best interest. Leigh Goodmark, a professor at University of Maryland Carey Law School who has represented domestic violence victims for over 20 years and is the author of A Troubled Marriage: Domestic Violence and the Legal System, says that the policies, while well-intentioned, “turned on their heads and became an exercise of state power” over victims.


There are all sorts of reasons women might not want their abuser arrested or prosecuted — they may rely on them financially, for housing, child support, or childcare, or they may not want to relive the abuse by testifying — and Cleopatra isn’t the first to be punished for it. In Florida in 2015, a young mother was held in contempt of court and sentenced to three days in jail for her refusal to participate in her abuser’s trial. (He was convicted anyway and spent 16 days in jail.) The victim explained that she was homeless and did not want to participate because the last time her partner went to jail, he lost his job and she lost her child support. During her contempt hearing, when the victim said that she was feeling anxious, the judge mocked her by saying, “You think you’re going to have anxiety now? You haven’t even seen anxiety.” In Maine in 2014, a 52-year-old woman was arrested for being in contempt of court when she refused to testify against her husband for a domestic violence charge, resisting a subpoena. She was held in jail for 24 hours. And a 2016 Tennessee investigation found that in one county, women were regularly jailed up to a week for not testifying against their alleged abusers. The prosecutor, when interviewed by the local news, defended himself by saying, “I’m not going to go back and apologize for what we’ve done, because I think we were doing the right thing.”


Cleopatra’s lawsuit with the SCHR includes a few other examples of women who were also charged victim’s fees for their decision not to participate in criminal proceedings in Cielinski’s courtroom. In May 2016, a Columbus woman who has chosen to remain anonymous was found by police after her boyfriend bashed her head with a handgun and left her on the side of the road. She was fined $200 by Cielinski for opting not to participate in the prosecution even though she never called the police in the first place and despite the ample evidence supporting her case. Another victim was fined $125 when she asked to dismiss charges against her boyfriend; she had a broken finger after the assault. A third woman was fined $150 for asking prosecutors to drop a case against her boyfriend, who had allegedly poked her in the eye and stolen her debit card. All three of these women had documented injuries.


No-drop policies like the Columbus victim’s fee are generally intended to punish false reporting and also encourage victims to strengthen the case against their abusers with their testimony. But a victim asking to drop charges has no bearing on the truth of her report, and prosecutors can go ahead with a case (and could even subpoena the victim to testify) regardless of the victim’s willingness to participate.


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Cleopatra outside the house where she grew up.

Many in politics and law enforcement argue that mandatory arrest and no-drop policies have worked. Incidents of nonfatal domestic violence dropped 63 percent between 1994, when domestic violence was federally criminalized, and 2012, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. But zooming out on the stats shows that violent crime in general decreased at the same rate during that time, so it’s hard to tell any real causation. Recent studies have raised further doubt that domestic violence criminalization has been as effective as previously thought. A 2015 study of more than 1,100 domestic violence victims in Milwaukee studied how safe victims were 23 years after police either issued a warning to their abuser or made an arrest, and found that “No victims benefited from partner arrest, but black victims suffered most, experiencing near double the risk of mortality” in the following years. And a 2007 analysis from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that domestic violence homicides actually increased under no-drop policies.


“We absolutely want batterers to be prosecuted for their crimes, but we also want victim safety — before, during, and after the prosecution — to be central,” says Allison Smith, the director of public policy for the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence. “We know that batterers retaliate against domestic violence victims who seek to hold them accountable via the criminal justice system, all with no guarantees that batterers will receive any meaningful punishment. A victim's choice not to assist in the prosecution of their case may be their best option for protecting themselves and their children.”


Goodmark argues that prosecutors who refuse to trust a victim’s desire to drop the case are assuming that women don’t know what is good for them. “It’s punishing women in the name of keeping them safe,” she says.


Other factors, like economic prosperity, have a greater influence on decreasing domestic violence than jail time, Goodmark says, and other experts have agreed. She says advocacy groups and law enforcement need to work together to find alternative solutions that fit individual. One example is a program in Oregon called You Have Options that gives xesual violence survivors three options for how to report: information-only, which allows them to report but not engage in the investigation; partial investigation, which allows the survivor to engage in an initial investigation without having charges brought unless they opt to do so; or complete investigation with full involvement. “Programs like this preserve information for later prosecution without forcing survivors to go through the criminal system before they’re ready to do so,”Goodmark says. But they can also be costly and time-consuming, and are impossible wherever mandatory arrest laws are in place. (Mandatory arrest automatically eliminates the first two options and jumps right to the third.)


Perhaps the worst result of all this is that one-size-fits-all policies discourage women from calling the police in the event there is another violent incident. Fewer reports make police think their policies are working, which, according to the 2015 Milwaukee study, is why these policies haven’t been changed since the ‘90s. But it can also be dangerous to victims. “Certainly, victims against whom this policy has been enforced will be significantly less likely to reach out in the future,” Smith says, “which only further endangers them and their children.”


After Cleopatra’s experience, she says she told her boyfriend, “I don’t care what you do, I’m not going back in there.”


Twelve hours after she was booked into jail, Cleopatra’s boyfriend was able to pick up her paycheck and bail her out. She didn’t lose her job; in fact, she told me that her supervisor laughed about it. But it wasn’t a joke for Cleopatra. “If I’d been in there a little bit more, I’d go crazy,” she said solemnly. “I’d get in a fight. They don’t have no air in there.”


When she got out of jail, she lived with her boyfriend until he was arrested again and went to jail. Unable to afford her rent on her own, Cleopatra moved in with her mom.


Now 23, Cleopatra is scared to visit someone she knows in jail because it reminds her of the traumatic day she spent there. She’s still living with her mom, hoping to be able to get her degree to become a medical assistant — something she’s taken college classes toward, but has never been able to afford to finish. She gained some notoriety around town from the lawsuit and got embarrassed when her photo appeared on the local news in connection to the suit. But she agreed to be the face of the suit because she thinks it’s important to speak up for others and try to make a change.


This week, she won. The SCHR and the city attorney of Columbus reached a settlement which will pay back $75,000 of victim’s fees collected from crime victims over the last four years, and repeal the city ordinance that allowed victim’s fees to be charged in the first place. It won’t stop mandatory arrests or other no-drop policies, which remain legal across the country, but lawyers at the SCHR hope it's a step toward ensuring victims' constitutional rights and giving them more power in the justice system.


Calls to Judge Cielinski for comment were not returned, and he has since retired from the bench. Calls to Officer Lincoln were directed to Columbus city attorney Clifton Fay, who confirmed via email that the city “has instituted new policies and staffing in Recorder’s Court including the addition of two new public defenders, new record-keeping procedures, and appointment of an Interim Senior Judge and Interim Clerk." "Columbus is working with the Southern Center to resolve all issues raised," he continued, "and to ensure that all victims of domestic violence and other crimes are treated fairly and with dignity in our Court system.”


After our meeting in her lawyer’s office, Cleopatra brought me to the blue clapboard house where she lived as a child with her grandmother — the one place she remembers ever feeling safe and loved. She finds herself an unlikely warrior for social justice but has decided that the role suits her. She walked to a grove of trees that she said represents each of her grandma’s grandchildren. Her tree was right out front, sprawling, with several low-hanging branches that were sturdy enough for her to climb.


“This is my opportunity to do something for a change,” Cleopatra said. She pulled herself up, eventually perching atop a high branch. “I’m not suing to get no money,” she said. “I’m suing for my rights.”


cos-cleopatra-photo-1491857981.jpg





Source: http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politic...omestic-violence-victims-fees-no-drop-policy/

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I don't know how to feel about this. Why report DV to the police at all if you don't want them to do anything about it and you plan on going back to your abuser anyway? I can also see how these kinds of calls become tiresome if the same people report DV over and over without ever pressing charges. Tough problem.
 

notreallyhere

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couldn't be me

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In all seriousness though, this just proves that the law is not here for domestic violence victims at all and it's really sad
 

SaLiLi

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this is actually the norm with dv issues. a lot of the women are brainwashed to protect the men and many of them do it. this is the main reason why law enforcement has issues prosecuting these cases, bc the victims either lie to protect the person or refuse to testify.

hopefully in the future the young lady can get access to a dv shelter (unless she already has) so she can find a stable place to live, unfortunately she may stay with him until she gets killed.
 

Olivia Baker

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I feel bad for her. I couldn't do it though. The second they said they were gonna fine me if I didn't go through with the charges, I would've been like "carry on". I don't like how she was charged with lying about being assaulted just because she chose not to go through with the charges. It sounds like there was plenty of physical evidence. The story mentioned the initial fee she was charged might be illegal. Her whole proceeding sounds sketchy to me.
 

Nadia Makita

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Why did she call the police if she didn't want them to arrest her bf? What did she think was gonna happen? Clearly she's gonna take him back now and he is going to be mad as hell leading to more abuse. She needs to figure out another way to pay rent or live with relatives.
 

Bella Goth

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So many dumb b!tches in this world. NEVER depend on a man for anything. Always have your own so you an leave whenever you need to.
 

Alenne

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She didn't want her boyfriend to go to jail, which she knew when she placed the call to the police. If you don't want an arrest, don't call the police. Nobody has time for that sh!t.

She was playing games and ended up losing. I don't feel sorry for her.
 

Madison.....

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This is exactly why I turn a blind eye to people's domestic disputes. I see this crap with both of my neighbors on top of and beside me. If you want to leave or want him gone make it happen. Otherwise don't waste other people's time with your back and forth mess.
 

Bonehilda

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The moment she reported the DV she should have been connected to therapy, emergency housing, and also given a protective order. Sounds like she didn't want the charges put against him because they both relied on each other financially and she stuck around so that she wouldn't be homeless/on the street. From the pictures they showed she is probably living in an a resource-poor low-income area.

DV cases are much more complicated than "why didn't she leave/press charges". Not everything is so black and white. In a perfect world an abused person would be able to separate from their abuser and be assisted by family and social services to stay safe and away from the abuser. That is not always the case and often times even if they do leave the abuser ends up tracking them down and harming/killing them.

Doing stuff like this isn't going to help victims come forward/press charges. Let's not act like there wasn't just a story in the news of a woman calling the cops on her abuser, the cops laughing it off/telling her to stop calling so much and less than 24 hours later the man shot her and her child dead with a AK.
 

Ola87rocks

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As much as the stupidity of this case grates and grinds my gears more than anything I just read in the last week...I will let my compassion dictate my next sentence instead.

I sure to God really hope that she somehow gets some help and gets out of this abusive relationship and evil dependency. Emotionally, mentally, financially...the whole fµck!ng shebang basically. And that she can escape what is the worst situation for her to be in right now.
 

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So what's the issue here? I don't get it. You call police to report an incident, then when the incident gets taken to court, you change your mind for whatever reason. You've wasted your time, the court's time, the officers time. Mean what you say or don't say it at all. I have no problem with this fine.
 

EtoileNoire

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I don't know how to feel about this. Why report DV to the police at all if you don't want them to do anything about it and you plan on going back to your abuser anyway? I can also see how these kinds of calls become tiresome if the same people report DV over and over without ever pressing charges. Tough problem.
I agree.

This measure is being used to target and extort poor, Black women. It's interesting how wealthy white women (in different states) don't turn up for court and cases are dropped and everyone goes free. Two most famous examples are the ex-wives of Trump acolytes, Steve Bannon and Andrew Puzder.

Similarly, white people make frivolous calls to 911 and/or acccuse imaginary Black men for some crime. At best, police waste resources looking for a suspect who doesn't exist; at worst an innocent person gets shot. Meanwhile, the white accuser is never prosecuted, or at least I've never heard of them being charged.

Having said that, people need to realize that police aren't social workers. Police are there to make arrests, not rehabilitate the abuser or scare him straight. Perhaps these DV victims need a different plan since they don't want to lose the financial support that the arrest of their attackers would cause. Dudes could get arrested for something else which has the same effect on the woman's finances.
 

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I get the whole scenario. People wondering why she called the police I think it mostly is a way for them to get the man to leave or stop the abuse for the night ..I feel like if a woman is gonna stay with a man that beats her thats her prerogative don't waste any tax dollars taking the dude to trial if she's not gone participate. Basically it's "Don't save her she don't wanna be saved "
 

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I'm not bothered by the fee. I think if you take up the courts time and try to use the police to mitigate domestic issues but you're unwilling to follow through with charges then yes you should have to pay a fine to cover your backing out of it. I do have an issue with the cop being pissed about her backing out and arresting her for it. Unless the judge ordered her arrested he shouldn't have gone that far. He arrested her because he was mad not because he felt she broke a law.
 

BadderNBoujee

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She deserved it. She's wasting everyone's time. Mean what you say. And she will take him back. She better hope he doesn't kill her cause it's a matter of time before he does.
 

Murci

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So what's the issue here? I don't get it. You call police to report an incident, then when the incident gets taken to court, you change your mind for whatever reason. You've wasted your time, the court's time, the officers time. Mean what you say or don't say it at all. I have no problem with this fine.

The issue is that in the city of Columbus, even if you don't call police, the victim can be fined and jailed for not testifying.

i get the lack of empathy for the woman mentioned in the title. but considering how dangerous it is for dv buttons to leave, much less testify its sh!tty to lock them up or take their whole paycheck cause they're scared.
 

Miss Ginger

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If she didn't hook up with a loser none of this would've happened. I think people should take responsibility for bad decisions. Did her boyfriend even support her emotionally during this time.
 

mystikspiral

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In all seriousness though, this just proves that the law is not here for domestic violence victims at all and it's really sad

That's the thing. I think the law wants to help DV victims with these no-drop policies, but that's hard to do when victims don't want to go against their abusers. It's a difficult problem to solve with no clean, easy solution that I can see.
 

Joy_River

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That's the thing. I think the law wants to help DV victims with these no-drop policies, but that's hard to do when victims don't want to go against their abusers. It's a difficult problem to solve with no clean, easy solution that I can see.


Post #11?
 

mystikspiral

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Doing stuff like this isn't going to help victims come forward/press charges. Let's not act like there wasn't just a story in the news of a woman calling the cops on her abuser, the cops laughing it off/telling her to stop calling so much and less than 24 hours later the man shot her and her child dead with a AK.

Right or wrong she was assumed to be crying wolf due to the volume of calls and lack of evidence that a crime had been committed or was in progress. If there was no crime being committed, what could the police have done for her when they responded to the call?

The issue is that in the city of Columbus, even if you don't call police, the victim can be fined and jailed for not testifying.

i get the lack of empathy for the woman mentioned in the title. but considering how dangerous it is for dv buttons to leave, much less testify its sh!tty to lock them up or take their whole paycheck cause they're scared.

I'd imagine that if an abuser would harm their victim for pressing charges and testifying, they'd probably be pretty peeved about the 911 call in the first place leading to even more abuse. Why call? That part confuses me.


Post #11?

That's a solution, yes, but nothing about it is easy to implement or maintain. Especially not nationwide where some of those services (ie. therapy and emergency housing) are already sparse to nonexistent.
 

DDC

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I'm sorry, but she gets zero sympathy from me. I'm fed up with women whose BFs/Husbands are going upside their heads on a regular basis, and they call the police, but when the police do their jobs and arrest the bastards, the women don't wanna press charges. Okay, if you don't wanna press charges, then don't call 911 and waste people's time. Continue putting up with the abuse, smdh.


I watched an old episode of Walker Texas Ranger the other day, and this incident reminded me of that episode. A woman was getting beat up by her bf in a parking garage, and a Texas Ranger saw it and came running and pulled the BF off of her. As soon as the Ranger slapped the handcuffs on the bf, the dumb ass woman hollered at the Ranger "Get off him". Smdh. You wanna feel sorry for these women, but they make it hard when they do sh!t like that, smh.
 

UglyFatGirl

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Women in domestic violence situations are not usually innocent women. They highly utilize police services just for attention only to change their minds once the cops actually try to do their jobs. They alienate their family. They sometimes goad their abusers into beating them because that is what they equate with "love". And they often put their children in harms' way to be physically, emotionally, and xesually abused as well by the abuser. They are not innocent victims.
 

Betty1994

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Why did she call the police if she didn't want them to arrest her bf? What did she think was gonna happen? Clearly she's gonna take him back now and he is going to be mad as hell leading to more abuse. She needs to figure out another way to pay rent or live with relatives.
Because it is not that simple, usually they get charged and come back to kill you. Him not getting charged most likely saved her.
 

PositiveLove

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If anyone wants to know why domestic violence sufferers don't want to come forward, look no further than the comments in this thread.
 

Eva Marie

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I agree.

This measure is being used to target and extort poor, Black women. It's interesting how wealthy white women (in different states) don't turn up for court and cases are dropped and everyone goes free. Two most famous examples are the ex-wives of Trump acolytes, Steve Bannon and Andrew Puzder.

Similarly, white people make frivolous calls to 911 and/or acccuse imaginary Black men for some crime. At best, police waste resources looking for a suspect who doesn't exist; at worst an innocent person gets shot. Meanwhile, the white accuser is never prosecuted, or at least I've never heard of them being charged.

Having said that, people need to realize that police aren't social workers. Police are there to make arrests, not rehabilitate the abuser or scare him straight. Perhaps these DV victims need a different plan since they don't want to lose the financial support that the arrest of their attackers would cause. Dudes could get arrested for something else which has the same effect on the woman's finances.

Stop trying to make this about race. If this girl was white, the situation would have played out the same. Also people who make false statements about imaginary black men committing crimes do get charged. I have read several stories on here about them.
 

NumbLove

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Why call she could have easily left and moved out! He ended up going to jail later anyways for something else..just stupid I see why the system get mad don't be calling and reporting if you're not taking it serious..one push and I'm out I'm not calling them cause I wouldn't want nothing on his records or mines..that type of stuff on file can prevent future jobs and a place of your own
 
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Can’t say I blame them when they put their lives on the line responding to domestic calls. A case where some woman called the police because her boyfriend was kicking her ass. Police shows up, put the guy in cuffs, the woman turns around and literally jump on the cop, kicking, punching, biting and scratching.
 

Kee

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Aren't most victims of domestic violence murdered after they leave their abuser or when they attempt to leave their abuser? So why are y'all still asking why the victims don't leave? It should be pretty clear

And we all know a restraining order doesn't do sh!t.
 

Kee

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Women in domestic violence situations are not usually innocent women. They highly utilize police services just for attention only to change their minds once the cops actually try to do their jobs. They alienate their family. They sometimes goad their abusers into beating them because that is what they equate with "love". And they often put their children in harms' way to be physically, emotionally, and xesually abused as well by the abuser. They are not innocent victims.
Whoah. What the fµck is this post? And who the fµck thumbs upped it.

Victims of domestic violence don't alienate themselves from their family, their abusers make them.

Y'all really say dumb sh!t like this and then wonder why victims of domestic violence don't want to come forward for help.
 

PositiveLove

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Women in domestic violence situations are not usually innocent women. They highly utilize police services just for attention only to change their minds once the cops actually try to do their jobs. They alienate their family. They sometimes goad their abusers into beating them because that is what they equate with "love". And they often put their children in harms' way to be physically, emotionally, and xesually abused as well by the abuser. They are not innocent victims.


This whole post is absolutely disgusting, you should be ashamed of your ignorant self, you fµck!ng piece of sh!t! The vast majority of domestic abuse sufferers are not as you described, stop spreading bµllsh!t and educate yourself you fµck!ng idiot!
Here I'll help you:

http://www.loveisrespect.org/is-this-abuse/why-do-people-stay/

https://www.psychcentral.com/lib/why-do-abused-victims-stay/

[video=youtube;IU50HksugZk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU50HksugZk[/video]
 

Tammyblue

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I cannot be sorry for her, she had an option her of him and she chose him and his ass still got locked up in the long run. I try not to judge DV victims because some really go through a lot, and some men are real evil, but I'm side eyeing her.
 

Madison.....

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Aren't most victims of domestic violence murdered after they leave their abuser or when they attempt to leave their abuser? So why are y'all still asking why the victims don't leave? It should be pretty clear

And we all know a restraining order doesn't do sh!t.

Most? I honestly don't believe that.....
 

Queen Charlotte

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OMG...I know this Judge and he is bat sh!t crazy. I'm shocked that he is still on the bench. I've had several work related conversations with him (several years ago) and he is not all there mentally.
 

EtoileNoire

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Stop trying to make this about race. If this girl was white, the situation would have played out the same. Also people who make false statements about imaginary black men committing crimes do get charged. I have read several stories on here about them.
You're absolutely right. What was I thinking? The criminal justice system never uses fines to impoverish and criminalize Black people. COUGH*Ferguson*COUGH
 

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