Low clouds and humid air making it very cold in our neck of the woods.  Got up to 48, but the humidity made it feel like almost freezing to me.

We have had snow on the Klickitats now, when we first moved here we were told that snow foretold snow in town within two weeks, thus far, these 50 years, it is about right.

Carla chose to work inside; the dirt was too wet and cold for her today.  So, you KNOW how it felt out there.  Still getting her leaves though.

-------------------------------

Chapter 8

Family Disturbances

One of the most dangerous calls an Officer will respond to is a family disturbance.  While more officers are assaulted during traffic stops, there are far more traffic stops than family disturbances; many officers have been seriously injured, maimed and can no longer work and killed per episode than almost any other contact with the public.

The victim of family disturbances is almost always the wife and/or children.  Although men can and have been victims it is very unusual; unless it is a cohabitation situation where two men are living together or married under Oregon Statutes.

While I, personally, never responded to a call where the wife had broken bones or other more serious injuries, they did and probably still do happen in The Dalles.

When I first started with the department, if an arrest was to be made for a misdemeanor charge of assault or other misdemeanor charge the wife had to make the arrest.

We would get the call and subdue the husband and then ask the wife if she wanted to make an arrest – not a good situation.

Unfortunately, we responded to many disturbances at the same residence.  I can remember one in particular that happened every pay day – or almost every pay day; we could almost set out watches as to the time we would be called.

The husband would receive his check, cash it and then hit the bars, spending most of it on booze.  After bar closing he would make his way home and then get into an argument with his wife.

The arguments were often over finances, bills not being able to be paid because he drank the money away; or what she had fixed for dinner was now inedible and he blamed her for that.

There would be crashing of furniture and lots of shouting that would either cause one of the neighbors to call, or she would finally call.

While she arrested him, at times, for assault there was no crime in his destroying their property.

Most of the time she refused to either sign the complaint or testify against him in court, and he would be released; only to start up again a couple weeks later.

Frankly, it was frustrating, because he never learned and she stayed with him, even though abused.

Don’t get me wrong, I do understand why she couldn’t leave him.  At one time there was a relationship that was built on love and she didn’t want to give that up.

She would tell us that she loved him and when he sobered up he would apologize and he really was a good husband.  It was only when he was drunk that he abused her.

It was quite typical of many of our family disturbance calls.

Usually the wife has been brow beaten and has been told so many times that she is worthless, poor excuse for a wife and/or mother, poor cook, etc. that she loses her self-esteem and begins to believe his rants.  Most of the wives didn’t have financial means to leave him, he could control all the finances and if she left she had nowhere to go and no money to live.

Many officers have been attacked by the wife after they have made an arrest, even though she is the one that arrested him, trying to keep him from being taken to jail.  Part of that is remorse, part of it is that she is afraid that he will ‘kick her out’ without means of support and part of it is that when he gets out he is probably going to come back and beat her even worse.

The wife often felt absolutely helpless and had no support from anyone, friends, family – often hiding her fears and the abuse from them, and we didn’t truly protect her.

Not a good way to live.

Social status doesn’t stop the abuse, either.  How much money a person makes, where they are on the social registry makes little difference; for whatever reason the husband believes that if he is upset he has the right to abuse his wife physically or emotionally.

It could be because he is in a job he doesn’t like, or had a disagreement with someone and couldn’t do anything about it.

Finances were often a big issue, ‘disrespect’ from the wife could start it off, dinner not on the table preciously when he wanted it, or wasn’t perfect the way he expected.

She has to walk on egg shells for fear of setting him off, and anything can set him off – and she is to blame.

Almost always alcohol or other drugs are involved and the husband, and sometimes the wife, were intoxicated which made reasoning with them even more difficult.

Arcane laws didn’t help, there was virtually no laws covering spouse abuse, per say, so we had to apply other laws that made it difficult to stop the abuse and make arrests.

I can remember three family disturbance calls that first year that flat out made me sick and disgusted.

I couldn’t do what I needed to do to protect the wife.

The first involved a couple that was cohabitating.  Both of these people were alcoholics and many times closed the bars.

I had seen her around and never sober.

She called us one night, Sarge and I were the only ones on duty.

Sarge told me that she has called many times before but either refused to arrest the man or refused to testify.

We got into the apartment.  She was completely necked as was he.  He wanted sex and she didn’t want to give it to him.

He actually had some scratches on him from her trying to keep him off.

Both were intoxicated.  Both were screaming at each other.

My first thought was she doesn’t deserve this!  She was standing there without a stitch on, telling him she didn’t want to have sex; crying as she yelled.

No woman deserved this; I don’t care how they live their life.

We got them settled down a bit, we tried to get at least one of them to leave until later in the morning – a pretty standard way of handling it back then, and still can work today if no violence has occurred.  Both made it clear they weren’t leaving.

Sarge looked at her and asked, “Do you want to make an arrest?”

She stood there, still naked, and then said, “no.”

Sarge turned to me and said, we are done here, let’s go.

I was frustrated, but knew there was absolutely nothing I could do.

The second call was much more gut wrenching, for both John and I, though.

We received the call shortly after bar closing.  Arriving at the house the wife let us in while the husband was telling us we couldn’t come into the house.

A man’s home is his castle is an old saw that has many truths.  However, if the police suspect a crime might have occurred or someone may be in danger, we have to investigate and family disturbances fell under that category almost 100% of the time.

We had to make sure the wife and/or kids and any other person in the house was okay.

But, the husband feels empowered by the fact that this is his home.  He feels we have no business there and like an animal in his den can become violent towards the officers.

Couple that with we have to go in very low key to try and get people calmed down, we are more vulnerable; in most cases we don’t want to make the situation worse if we go in too hard to begin with, we want to see they can settle down and talk to us.

If we respond to a crime in progress, or we stop a car that is reported involved in a crime we are prepared for violence.  We have weapons out and become very assertive in hopes that we don’t have to use the weapons and the fact the suspect sees we have them out at the ready will give up.

We are also prepared to take aggressive action to protect ourselves or others so our mindset is such that we are less likely to be injured then in a family disturbance.

However, if we do that in a family disturbance it creates a much more dangerous situation, and most of the time we don’t need to, we can get most of the people to settle down and make some intelligent decisions, not always, but most of the time.

Another issue when going into a home where there is violence is there are multitude of weapons that can be used, not just guns, but knives and other things that can be used as weapons – even frying pans have been used in the past.

In this situation the husband was refusing to calm down and the wife wanted to leave with the children.

The spaghetti that the wife had prepared for dinner, many hours before, and left on the stove until he got home was all over the floor and wall; dishes had been pushed off the table and broken.

Clearly, there had been violence there, but he hadn’t hit her, yet.

The children, three of them all elementary aged, were sitting on the daveno in their pajamas listening and watching all of this go on.  Tears rolling down their faces, they were afraid.

This was a school night; by now it was about 0300 hours, can you imagine how well they did the next day?

As I write, tears still come to my eyes, I so felt for those kids.

The husband refused to let them leave with her.  Now, we had a dilemma, we couldn’t force him to let her take the children; and she wasn’t going to leave without them.

The husband was drunk, angry and acting as if he was going to hit one of us at any time.  John even tried getting into his face to make him swing but he was smart enough, even in his alcoholic fog, not to try and hit him.

Then it got really interesting.  The wife started asking the kids, “do you want to stay with daddy, or go with me?”

Of course, daddy had to chime in also and basically asked them the same thing.

The oldest child, a little girl, crying, said, we don’t want you to leave mommy, we want you to stay, we want you both to stay.

Finally I took the wife aside and asked if she really thought the husband would hurt the kids.  She was adamant that he was a good father, and wouldn’t hurt the children.

I then convinced her to leave coming back later in the day when things were less turbulent and he was sober.

She did.  We never were called back, hopefully it meant that he had settle down, but I am doubtful, she probably had just given up calling – like so many before her.

The third disturbance was very frustrating, but there was nothing anyone could do, I had arrested him, he had admitted the crime, but the charges were dropped, the law was on his side!

The laws have changed and we will write about them, but this was a miscarriage of justice back then.

To be continued:

Copyright November 10, 2017 Art Labrousse

--------------------------------------

Ephesians 5:25  KJV  “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;”       

A verse every husband should memories and hold close to their hearts.

Even in the verse before:  Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

There is no excuse for abuse. 

I know that there is a lot of controversy over that verse, but the truth of the matter of the matter that in a good relationship there is an equality that cannot be matched anywhere else.

The wise husband listens to his wife, oftentimes she has good advice – now, if I can just always practice what is just said.

Later, Art (-: