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Police sharpen focus after 2009's domestic violence
Depression, jealousy, substance abuse, unemployment and even pregnancy can be warning signs that a troubled relationship is headed toward murder.
Continue reading the rest of "Police sharpen focus after 2009's domestic violence" by Athens Banner-Herald
Domestic violence experts call these clues "lethality factors," and after a particularly deadly 2009, Athens-Clarke police plan to revamp their reporting system to document those risk factors in the future.
"We're working on putting lethality factors in reports so when they get to the investigators, they can determine where they need to go with them," said Lt. David Leedahl of the Athens-Clarke Police Department's Centralized Criminal Investigations division.
"The higher the lethality factors are, the higher the risk is" that a victim might be seriously harmed or killed, Leedahl said.
Police will track lethality factors to help prioritize cases, and prosecutors will look at those circumstances to fast-track the most dangerous abusers through court, and judges will consider them when deciding whether to set bail, Athens-Clarke Solicitor General C.R. Chisholm said.
"On the standard report, officers don't have a list of lethality factors, so this is going to make it easier for them to check things off," Chisholm said.
Looking for and documenting lethality factors is just one way authorities are trying to prevent another year like 2009, when a record 10 people were killed in Clarke County because of domestic violence.
Two weeks ago, police tripled the number of investigators assigned to work domestic violence cases, from two to six.
That means the average monthly caseload for a domestic violence investigator should drop from 45 cases to about 20, according to Leedahl.
"That's a more manageable number," he said. "It will allow investigators to get more in-depth in their cases and lead to more prosecutions."
The Georgia Criminal Justice Coordinating Council funded the new investigator positions, under the Violence Against Women Act, partly because the grant application cited the huge spike in domestic violence murders, according to Leedahl.
"We certainly don't want to see a repeat of last year," he said.
Chisholm's office also received a CJCC grant that will soon let him hire a prosecutor dedicated to handling domestic violence cases in State Court, just as the district attorney has for Superior Court cases.
"We want someone who will be handling cases from the arraignment on," Chisholm said. "We want prosecutors meeting not just with victims and witnesses, but going to the (crime) scene and being more active with their communications between victims, detectives and domestic violence services so that we can reduce, if not eliminate, the possibility of information slipping through the cracks."
Hiring more detectives and prosecutors will help better protect domestic violence victims, but just adding lethality factors to police reports could have a dramat
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