Database Helps Fight Domestic Violence
Fast Access to Details Aids Intervention Unit

By Henri E. Cauvin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 11, 2008

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.

A couple of years ago, Files and other officials decided to resurrect the idea, and they were able to obtain grants to launch the system. On July 1, the secure, Web-based system went live and is largely operational, save for a few features in the works, Files said.

In sprawling Prince George's, which has more reports of domestic violence annually than any Maryland county or city, efficiency is important. Sheriff's deputies, as arms of the court, serve protective orders -- as well as peace orders, which are issued in cases in which the parties have not been married or otherwise cohabitating. On a busy shift, a deputy might serve eight to 10 orders.

But that is only part of the job in Prince George's, where sheriff's deputies also are responsible for responding to 911 calls of domestic violence in a central swath of the county that includes Capitol Heights, Forestville and Suitland.

If an officer shows up and it is unclear whether the abuse suspect has been served with an order, the officer can pull up the file on a dash-mounted laptop. In some cars, including the one Whyte uses, the officer can print out the document.

It is an option that is especially useful when the subject of a court order has hidden or destroyed the document, or when one of the round-the-clock court commissioners issues an interim order. Instead of heading to one of the 24-hour-a-day commissioners' offices in Hyattsville, Oxon Hill or Upper Marlboro to pick up the order, officers can pull it up wherever they are.

"Just in terms of response time, that takes hours and hours off a call," said Capt. Daniel Hall, who until recently led the sheriff's domestic violence unit.

For the people the police are trying to protect, the swifter the intervention the better, said Kenya Fairley, a counselor in Prince George's and director of residential services for the Family Crisis Center.

"What would help victims feel safer is immediate action by law enforcement to hold perpetrators accountable for the crimes they commit," Fairley said. "I think this database will assist in being able to do that."