Domestic violence from an ex-cop's perspective

Domestic violence from an ex-cop's perspective

Harry Crouch's comments (Letters, April 10) regarding domestic violence are well taken. As a police officer most of my life, now retired, I am proud of adhering to the tenants of the Policeman's Prayer, part of which is: “Let me never make a judgment in a rash or callous way. But let me hold my patience. Let each man have his say.”

I don't know if the “feminist movement” per se is behind the imbalanced judicial system's behavior so prevalent in this regard, but the abhorrent domestic violence laws passed years ago were poorly written, perhaps by their biased influence, thus opening Pandora's box. Coupled with spousal rape laws, all hell broke loose.

I recall police training classes in the '70s and '80s – mandated after the earlier laws were passed – given by female instructors (never saw a male instructor), with their teachings so dripping with male hatred that everyone in the class felt uncomfortable, male and female officers alike. Truly abused women needed better laws to protect them, but not these. They also removed arrest decisions from the responding officer and we repeatedly had to arrest the man, some whose only crime was physically repelling a woman attacking him. In the hundreds of calls of domestic violence I responded to in my career, perhaps 90 percent to 95 percent were false, yet I saw children's and men's lives destroyed irrevocably due to vindictive, greedy, spoiled, mentally imbalanced, and/or drug-infested women perverting the judicial system. This is not to say the man was a pillar of virtue, just that the judicial sword was placed in the woman's hand by poor laws. The best I could do, in face of mandated laws, would be to also arrest the woman if there was sufficient evidence she also was violently involved (not self-defense reactions) or initiated the incident. On rare occasion, able to prove the woman's claim was false, I would arrest only her. Obviously, in those cases, I was not popular with whatever movement supported this “Alice in Wonderland” approach, nor with supervisors or prosecuting attorneys so self-absorbed with political correctness that truth was irrelevant.

However, nothing will be done, we will all write our letters to reduce our anger at injustice, and this nation's morals will just continue to decline. Sorry, Harry.

GEORGE SPERRY, La Mesa

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit