Database Helps Fight Domestic Violence

Fast Access to Details Aids Intervention Unit

Domestic violence doesn't keep regular hours. Frequently, it unfolds very late or very early.

And that makes it difficult for the police officer who shows up in the middle of the night or early morning and has to make sense of a conflict that might well have a paper trail back at the courthouse.

Now, Maryland is putting more information in the hands of law enforcement officers, such as Prince George's County Sheriff's Deputy 1st Class Andrew Whyte, who encounter domestic disputes almost every day.

Whyte and a few dozen other sheriff's deputies assigned to the domestic violence intervention unit spend their shifts dealing with dysfunction, serving court orders on disputants and responding to 911 reports of abuse.

In the past, when Whyte responded to such an emergency call, the police dispatcher, using a state registry linked to a national database, was able to tell him whether protective orders had been issued anywhere in the country against any of the people involved.

But without a stop at the courthouse, impossible in the middle of the night, Whyte would not be able to learn much more about the circumstances of the case and the particulars of any court orders. Did such an order, for example, indicate whether there were children in common? What, if any, access to the children was the subject of the order permitted to have?

Such details are now available to police anywhere, anytime. With the creation of a statewide database of such orders this year, Whyte and other officers with computers in their patrol cars can call up an image of the order right from the driver's seat.

"This is more efficient," Whyte said on a recent night, as he logged into the database to demonstrate its uses. "I'll have the information on hand immediately."

The database, which came online over the summer, is part of an effort by the state Administrative Office of the Courts to make orders readily available not only to police, but also to District and Circuit courts, said Clifton E. Files, the court official who coordinated the initiative. Local courts typically had little information about what might be happening even in the county next door, which often led to confusion and conflict, said Files, the domestic violence specialist in the state courts' Department of Family Administration.

A person seeking an order from District Court in one county might be the subject of a Circuit Court order in another county, Files said. But before the database, with no way of readily knowing about the other action, the District Court might issue the order with no provision for sorting out potentially conflicting directives. In such a situation, it was often left to police officers to work out contradictory orders -- or not.

"Law enforcement was a bit confused and upset," Files said. "Who's going to say which one of these is the right order? So, they have to just throw up their hands."

The idea of a single, statewide database of domestic violence orders is not new, Files said. But implementation of the concept languished for several years because of a lack of funding.