A day after Omaha Police announced there was a policy violation in a domestic violence case earlier this month, an advocate explains how new officers are trained to deal with these sort of calls.
“Too often it does look like just two people fighting over a television remote once the officers arrive,” says Tara Muir, executive director of Domestic Violence Council.
The murders of Destacia Straughn and her little girl, Kenacia, recently put a spotlight on this issue.
Hours before the Dec. 6 killings, officers had paid a visit to Straughn’s home and had contact with the murder suspect, Dontaveous Loyd.
Muir says the calls are even harder for officers when there does not appear to be any physical evidence supporting a victim's claim.
In the past, they had limited options.
"Law enforcement was just sending a lot of victims down at the protection order office during business hours the next morning if they couldn't make an arrest,” Muir says.
But now, she claims the department's newest recruits are taught to go a step further when there is no probable cause for an arrest.
This newest training, based on a community assessment study involving the Domestic Violence Council, OPD, prosecutors and probation officers, was long in place before the double murders, Muir says.
During the training, a survivor of domestic abuse shared her experience which parallel Straughn’s story, she says.
“She called for two nights in a row and couldn't get law enforcement to help. It was the third morning her ex-boyfriend drove his car through her garage door and beat her in front of her three-year-old son,” Muir says.
The amended training requires officers to connect victims to the hotline number for the Women’s Center for Advancement.
"We can't ask law enforcement to be social workers and we don't want them to be,” Muir says. “They're there to really serve and protect, but they can do a good hand-off to a hotline worker to say, 'Help her process. Let's get her somewhere safe.’”
Muir says she hopes to expand the training to the entire police department.
OPD could not provide a comment for this story.
