Police
do best
to help
Police officers, like all other decent, fair-minded members of the community,
abhor and actively oppose violence against women. Through their work,
they see, and know better than many others, just the kind of atrocious
abuse women suffer at the hands of disturbingly vicious men. And they
need no enlightenment as to the resulting trauma victims endure through
a period – or life – of domestic violence.
Police officers, while duty-bound to practise impartiality, stand
in support of and diligently act for abused women.
Sadly, some women’s support groups recently claimed that police were
failing abused women (The Advertiser, March 17, 2004). According
to the press, they told the parliamentary select committee investigating
police resources and staffing that:
- Police did not take restraint orders seriously.
- Police were not protecting domestic violence victims and their
children from further attack.
- Abused women had lost faith in police.
- Police had responded poorly to domestic violence and therefore
left women feeling “vulnerable, helpless and inadequate”.
Wrongly, these allegations virtually lay the blame for the plight
of all women caught in domestic violence at the feet of the police
– people who, with limited resources, do their very best to help them.
Police certainly take restraint orders seriously and frequently follow
procedure to bring them into existence. But if a victim were to ask
a police officer if an order, once granted, was guaranteed to stop
her attacker, what could he or she say? The reality is that a restraint
order comes with no guarantee of offender compliance.
And besides occasional welfare checks on victims – as time and commitments
to the rest of the community allow – what more can operational police
do? They cannot act as personal bodyguards.
The allegation that police respond poorly to domestic violence seems
highly subjective. What exactly constitutes a poor response? Is it
when a police officer has to tell a victim she has insufficient grounds
for a restraint order?
Is a response poor because, to a victim, a police officer appears
impartial, in the face of a suspect’s denials and an absence of proof?
Is a police officer responding poorly when he or she takes a calm,
methodical approach, instead of showing personal outrage toward a
suspect?
One of the best and oldest rules of policing is not to become personally
involved. In everyone’s interests, police must maintain the appropriate
measure of professional distance. Perhaps some victims wrongly perceive
this as indifference toward their particular circumstances.
Police officers do not want domestic violence victims to lack faith
in them. But, to restore that faith, victims must try to view police
input through rational rather than emotional eyes.
