A Cops True Story Of Domestic Violence! Please Read!

I recently wrote an article in reference to acts of kindness. It was about an experience I had several years ago involving a lady that I helped in a domestic violence situation. One of the rules for posting the entry was that it had to be fewer than 200 words. That was very difficult for me to do because the story is very complicated and lengthy. A friend of mine here on Steemit encouraged me to write the full story in hopes that it might help someone that could be in a similar situation. She has a very valid point so let the writing begin.

At the time of this incident I was working as a patrol sergeant for my Sheriff’s Office. I have worked in several different departments like the jail, patrol, specialized instructor, detective and even worked as an undercover narcotics agent. I took my job extremely serious and I was very good at what I done. Nothing made me feel better than to help someone and nothing made me feel worse than not being able to help someone that needed it. I was in my prime and wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone. Well, there were a couple of times that made me scared but that’s a whole story in itself. While on patrol, I worked the night shift. I actually preferred nights because there was more action to get in to. There was also less traffic which meant that I could drive faster to get to someone. Trying to drive 10-18 (emergency traffic) in the daytime with all the traffic was a nightmare!

Well on this particular night, it was a hot and humid North Carolina summer. Summer time is usually more active for police than winter. Reason being is that the nice warm weather entices people to drink a lot and often get out of hand. And then there are the nights with a full moon! It’s not a myth, people get crazy during full moons, just ask any veteran night shift officer.
Dispatch calls my number on the radio and says “Sergeant, I’ve got 10-18!” Remember what I said 10-18 meant? It means “Emergency” “Emergency Traffic” “Hurry up”. So when the dispatcher tells me that, I automatically stop what I’m doing or about to do and tell them to go ahead with the information. Dispatch advised me that they have a woman on the line and someone is trying to break in her house as we speak! The dispatcher stated that she can hear the suspect kicking on the door and a child crying in the background!

I was driving my patrol cruiser like it has never been driven before and taking each curve to its maximum limits. Dispatch keys up the radio and says “Sergeant, the suspect has gained entry!” Okay, my blood is pumping and my adrenaline is out the roof now! I can literally smell my brakes getting overheated and the tires smoking. I literally felt like I was pushing my foot through the floorboard mashing the gas pedal. I asked dispatch for an update and they said the line had been disconnected. I’m thinking the worst but I’m not far away now! I turned off my blue lights and siren for tactical reasons about two miles away.
I arrive on scene (by myself) and observed a male subject in the front yard screaming and breaking things. As soon as I exited my patrol car, the male subject began yelling and cursing at me. I didn’t know what was going on other than what dispatch has told me, so I ordered the male subject to lay on the ground. He needed some persuasion but he laid face down and I handcuffed him for safety reasons. While handcuffing him, he is screaming at me saying “This is my Godd@mn house, mother*ucker!”

Well, now I’m confused at what is going on but I figured it was a domestic call instead of a breaking and entering in progress call. So now that I have him secured, I made contact with the caller inside of the house and she is hysterical. I asked if anyone else was inside the house and she advised her son was in the bedroom. I conducted a protective sweep through the house just to confirm that there were no surprises waiting for me. I found a young boy in his room crying profoundly, he may have been 8 or 9 years old.
I tried to comfort the boy by telling him that everything was okay now and I asked him what had been going on. Usually children will tell the truth about what happened when they’re not around their parents. The boy told me that his daddy was drunk and was scaring him and his mommy. I left the questioning at that for the moment and told him to just stay in his room for now and I promised everything would be okay. By this time, back up had arrived and I just had the officer to stay outside with the male subject and take notes on what he said had happened and also to keep him outside.
The house was demolished beyond your imagination. There were broken pieces of furniture all over the place. The front screen door was shattered and the main door had been kicked in. There were broken dishes, pictures, mirrors and everything else that was breakable was broken. I began questioning the original caller (The wife of the suspect and mother of the boy) and taking notes and filling out paperwork. The lady stated that her husband had gone out drinking with a friend earlier that evening. She advised that when he drinks too much, he tends to get violent or loses his temper at the slightest thing. So to help prevent anything from happening, she had cleaned the house and prepared him something to eat for whenever he did come home.

While she and her son were watching television, she heard her husband come home with his buddy. The buddy didn’t come in the house; he just dropped his friend off and then left. As soon as he entered the front door, she knew it was going to be a bad night. Without reason, he asked “What the fu*k are you looking at!?” with a very aggressive tone. She told him that she didn’t want to fight tonight and that she had supper in the refrigerator and that she would heat it up for him. She stated that while she was heating up his food, the tension was building at a rapid pace and she knew something was going to happen.
The victim (The female) stated that she thought since he sat down at the kitchen table that he would just eat and go to sleep and everything might be okay. So she couldn’t wait to get his food in front of him fast enough. She advised me that he was beyond drunk and that she believed that he had been using drugs as well but didn’t know what kind. This was a regular event between both parties but each time it would happen, it became worse and worse.

The victim stated that she took the plate out of the microwave and placed it on the table in front of her husband. She then stated that he took a bite of his food and it apparently burned the inside of his mouth so he immediately lost his temper. He took the plate of food and threw it up against the wall, shattering the plate in to pieces. She began begging and pleading with him to stop but there was no use, the trigger had been tripped!
All she could do was try to calm him down and keep him away from their son. He was in a rage and began breaking anything he could get his hands on but he never hit his wife. While in the living room, she was backed up against the wall and he was giving her hell. The boy came out of his room, scared to death! He saw his drunken father being extremely violent and was afraid for his mother’s safety as well as his own. The boy pleaded with his father to stop screaming and breaking things but it didn’t do anything but add fuel to the already roaring fire!
The boy went in to his father’s bedroom and retrieved a shotgun off of a wall rack. The boy had shot the shotgun before and knew how to operate it. The boy cocked the shotgun, pointed it at his father and told him to leave his mother alone! The father was caught off guard by this, as well as the mother and the father paused and looked at his son and asked him what he was doing. The boy screamed at his father while crying and begging him to go away.

The father shockingly turned and started to go out the front door, cursing at every step. As soon as the father went outside, the mother locked the door behind him and called 911. Just as soon as the father heard the front door lock behind him, he became enraged again and started to beat on the door, demanding to be let in. This is the point where I was dispatched to the call. When the father made entry in to the house, he told his family that they had fu*ked up. The mother hung up the phone with communications (should have left it off the hook so the dispatcher could hear) and her and her son ran in to the back room and locked the door.
The father began to beat on the door but the mother and son were both putting every ounce of weight they had on the opposite side to try to keep him out. Even though I turned off my siren a few miles before getting there, he apparently heard me coming and went outside and started taking his frustrations out on lawn furniture and other items in the yard. (This is when I arrived on scene and detained the suspect.)

After getting the mothers and sons information and stories, I listened to what the suspect had to say. He admitted to everything that he had done and said that he could destroy his own property if he wanted to and it was his own house and he can’t be locked out and that he had every right to bust down the door. Well, he was right unfortunately. From everything that I had heard, I was unable to charge him with anything and trust me; I was trying to think of anything to arrest this scum bag! He had been through the system before and knew what he could get away with and what he couldn’t. This was on a Friday night so if I could have arrested him for a domestic violence charge, he would have had to sit in jail for the entire weekend and see the judge Monday morning. But I couldn’t charge him with anything! He can destroy his house if he wants to and he can bust the front door down all day long because it’s his! But I had to help this family somehow!

I went back inside and talked to the victim and asked her if there was anywhere safe that she and her son could go and I could transport them there. She said that she didn’t have any family or friends close by and didn’t have any money for a motel. I contacted the only women’s shelter in our area and they couldn’t accept her because they were full. I pleaded with the shelter and explained the situation and even told them that the mother and son could share a bed. The shelter told me that even if they did have room, they only accept females.
I’m getting concerned now but I would be damned if I was going to leave that family there alone with that monster! I was the sergeant so there was no one to call for advice; I was the supervisor so I needed to make some sort of decision because I had been there for a long time already and had the husband in handcuffs and there was no charge in sight. I went back inside to speak with the mother and told her our dilemma. I could see the desperation in her eyes and it truly saddened me. I asked her again to go back through the events and tell me everything and not to leave any details out. She began telling the story again but this time she was being more detailed which was extremely helpful.

When she got to the part where they were in the living room and she was backed up against the wall, she said something that she didn’t say before. She said that she was backed against the wall and her husband was in her face screaming at her and drew back his fist and went through the motion of hitting her but stopped just before reaching her face. BINGO! I think I can arrest him now but wasn’t sure yet! I went out to my patrol car and broke out the almighty blue book! It’s a very thick book that has all the elements to criminal charges; this was before MDT’s (Mobile Data Terminals or computers in cars) were available.
I looked up the general statue for assault on a female but I had to dig deeper and find out what the state considered an assault and this is what it read… “Assault is the unlawful touching of a person or an attempt to do so. To be charged with assault in North Carolina, it doesn’t even require physical contact. Putting someone in fear of physical harm is enough for an assault charge conviction.” I was on cloud 9 and couldn’t wait to tell her the news that I was going to arrest her husband and she had the weekend to stay in the house without worrying that he could bail out. I provided her with all the paperwork and information regarding domestic violence and implored her to seek a 50-B protection order (Restraining Order) against him. I also advised her that it was possible to have an eviction served on him with the protection order so that he couldn’t return to his own house except by being accompanied by an officer to get his clothing, toiletries and tool of trade. This is an everyday thing for officers to go through, but I felt different about this family. Most cases, the victim returns to the abuser and it’s just a revolving door and we go to the same houses all the time. But I had hope for this lady and felt confident that she would go through with my advice.

Well, all domestic cases get forwarded to a domestic violence officer for follow up investigations and the patrolman does nothing else but waits for the court date if an arrest was made. After a few continuances, the suspect plead guilty to the charge of assault on a female and was sentenced by the judge and ordered not to be around her or the child. I had done my job; the rest was up to her.

Well, approximately a year later, I was outside the front of the courthouse talking with a defendant that I had charged for something, can’t remember exactly what. (Every officer has a specific court day every month that they go and deal with all of their cases. Night time officers have to go on their days off.) A lady approached me after I was finished speaking with the other party. She asked “Sergeant, do you remember me?” She looked familiar but I just couldn’t place her and asked her name. She told me her name and I still couldn’t remember, I’m horrible with names! I am a lot better remembering locations or addresses better for some reason so I asked what her address was. When she told me her address, I immediately remembered her and the incident that took place! I asked how she was doing and just out of curiosity asked why she was at the courthouse. She said that she was at court renewing her one year protection order against her husband. I was shocked that she actually went through with it because most don’t. I told her how happy and proud I was of her because most cases do not turn out like this and the victim usually forgives the offender and it just starts back over. She began telling me how much her life had changed for the better. She had moved to a new location along with her son and everything couldn’t be better. She had a new job and is just going through the motions of getting a divorce. She looked in to my eyes and with the absolute most sincerity possible and tears forming, she said “I just wanted to say thank you for everything that you done for me that night, you literally saved me and my son’s life and helped us start a new beginning. I was humbled and almost started crying because like I said before, most cases do not turn out like this. As officers, we do so much paperwork (especially on domestics) and its all for nothing. But this one case out of hundreds, worked out the way it was supposed to and out of all the wasted time and effort that I had spent on other domestics where the parties involved got back together and done it again, this one made it all worthwhile. She asked me if she could give me a hug and I told her “Absolutely!”

I am really hoping that this true story helps someone or encourages someone to stand up against an abusing partner. DO NOT let anything effect reporting domestic violence! Some women use the excuse that they cannot afford to live on their own or find temporary housing or he will change! Trust me, he will NOT change and help is out there! You just have to ask for it!

*This post is a true story of events that took place. It will be part of a book that is in the process of being written. I have the original police report that backs up the events stated. Any copyright or plagiarism will not be tolerated and be reported and prosecuted as such. August 8th, 2017