Police Tool Assesses Domestic Abuse 'Lethality'

By Donna St. George
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 2, 2007

A growing number of police departments across Maryland are adopting a domestic violence program that uses a series of pointed questions to identify those most at risk of being killed and get them immediate aid or counseling.

Organizers say the effort has connected counselors with hundreds of people who otherwise were unlikely to seek help. Called "lethality assessment," the program is based on research from experts at Johns Hopkins University. It has been embraced by 57 police forces statewide, including agencies in Prince George's, Calvert, Anne Arundel, Howard, Charles, St. Mary's and Frederick counties.

Under the new approach, which has sparked national interest, police who answer domestic 911 calls take a far more involved role with the victims they encounter at the scene. When a case shows a high risk of lethality, police talk to the victim about the danger, phone a counselor immediately and encourage the victim to talk. Since early last year, 900 people have done so.

Counselors say these victims have often been living with their situations for so long or in such isolation that it is hard for them to see the peril they face.

"If it saves only one life, then it has done what it was supposed to do," said Capt. Daniel Hall of the Prince George's County sheriff's office, which started the program in January in a district that includes Suitland, Capitol Heights, Landover and Seat Pleasant.

The questions, 11 in all, probe whether victims have ever been threatened with a weapon, been choked or received death threats. Police also ask if the abuser has access to a handgun.

"It's difficult for many women to believe that the person who they loved -- who loved them, who may be the father of their children -- is capable of killing them," said Janis Harvey, who works with the program as chief executive of the YWCA of Annapolis and Anne Arundel.

The program comes at a time when domestic violence activists and police are increasingly working together but still searching for the best ideas, especially when it comes to preventing homicide.

"A lot of states are watching what Maryland is doing," said Cheryl O'Donnell of the National Network to End Domestic Violence. "They are very interested in seeing the results."

Federal statistics show that 1,181 women and 329 men died in intimate-partner homicides across the United States in 2005, the most recent year available. Virginia had 67 victims and the District 14 that year. Maryland had 56 in fiscal 2006.

Among those keeping an eye on the new program are officials in Virginia and the District. "It's not something we have in Virginia, but it's a concept we support," said Kate McCord of the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance.

Ken Noyes, co-executive director of the D.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence, went further: If District police and advocates could create such a program, he said, "I have no doubt that lives could be saved."

Maryland organizers say the new practice is a vital counterpart to the domestic violence fatality review teams that many counties and states have started in recent years. Such reviews look at what went wrong after a domestic homicide.

"For so long, dealing with domestic violence has been reactive," said Michaele Cohen of the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence, which launched the program with the researchers' help. "This is not a panacea by any means, but we hope it is one way to be proactive with this issue, which can be incredibly deadly."

Not everyone has signed on, however.

In Montgomery County, police are staying with their current practices, which do not include lethality assessment. Instead, they require connecting victims with counselors by phone in cases of arrest and encouraging such calls generally. This approach "is maybe a step better," said Officer Melanie Hadley. "We feel our officers aren't going to the scene and given the added pressure of assessing within minutes."

In all, Maryland police have conducted 3,384 lethality assessments since Jan. 1, 2006, when the program started in Harford County and on the Eastern Shore.

An analysis done on the Eastern Shore, looking at 354 victims who were assessed, showed that in 90 percent of cases, the victims had not received domestic violence services in the past. Among the highest-risk victims, 86 percent had never before sought help, according to the report by the Mid-Shore Council on Family Violence.

"I think the most important thing is that we are reaching people that would not have contacted us," said Jeanne Yeager, the Mid-Shore group's executive director.

In some places, police have grumbled about additional paperwork on the scene of volatile conflict. But Hall, of Prince George's, said: "It's just one sheet and it's just 11 questions. It's not a big deal at all."

In Calvert, where the program started in May 2006, Lt. Bobby Jones said that although deputies have long made "internal assessments" about victims' safety, the research-based questionnaire "makes it more glaring and obvious."

Jones said the practice also frees up deputies to focus more on their investigation while the victim talks to the counselor by phone.

Since lethality assessments started, Calvert has not had a homicide involving spouses or other intimate partners, he said. In the past, the county has had one or two homicides a year, many of them domestic, he said.

"There is no way to know whether it is directly related to the program," he said. But it could be, he said. "The thing about crime prevention is that it's a hard thing to measure."

Lethality assessments are not done every time officers respond to a domestic 911 call, but always on repeat calls and those with signs of violence.

Of those assessed during the past 18 months, 54 percent were rated as "high danger," showing factors believed to be predictive of homicide: threats to kill, use of a weapon against the victim in the past, assaults that include choking. Unemployment and having a stepchild in the home are factors, too, although they are not as heavily weighted as some others.

The basis of the assessment is a 2003 study led by Jacquelyn C. Campbell of Johns Hopkins University that examined cases of women killed or almost killed by husbands and boyfriends in 11 U.S. cities and compared them against other abused women.

With this research in mind, Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence leaders sat down with Campbell and her colleagues, as well as prosecutors, police and others. Over a year, the group came up with a police protocol and the 11-question lethality assessment. The document is revised, more concise version of one Campbell developed in 1986 for advocates and health professionals.

Pilot programs were launched in 2004.

Since the full program started in 2006, almost one in three of the 900 victims who spoke to a counselor on the scene of a domestic incident later showed up at a domestic violence services agency -- for a protective order, shelter, counseling, support group or other service.

"To get 284 of them into services, that's huge," said Dave Sargent, a retired District police lieutenant who has shepherded the new program, training police across Maryland on behalf of the Maryland network. "We believe that by getting that victim into services, we have enhanced her chances of survival."