The recent killings of two Tremonton-Garland police officers responding to a domestic violence call threw a harsh spotlight on a dark subject — one that Liz Johnson and Wendy Isom would be the first to tell you is far too prevalent in our society. So the harsher the spotlight, the better.
Liz is a Salt Lake City Police Department sergeant in the domestic violence unit. Wendy is a director of the SLCPD’s victim advocate program. The numbers they cite are alarming:
In Salt Lake City alone, according to Sgt. Johnson, the police field 250 domestic violence calls every month that are serious enough that a victim might need to relocate and find shelter.
And yet, Isom notes, vacancies in the estimated 1,500 beds in the state’s dozen or so nonprofit shelters are hard to come by.
“On any given night,” she says, “they’re all at capacity.”
It’s harder to get into a DV shelter than a Super Bowl hotel.
Another alarming statistic: Last year, according to research by KSL.com, there were 100 homicides in Utah. The cause of 34 of them was domestic violence, by far the highest category. This year, in Salt Lake City alone, domestic violence cases are up 14%.
If even a sliver of good were to come from the senseless killing of those two officers in the prime of their lives, just trying to keep the peace, it would be in a heightened awareness of a societal problem that goes on in the shadows, behind closed doors.
“There is no such thing as too much public attention on this problem,” says Sgt. Johnson. “If you hear something, or if you see something, don’t think, well, it’s none of my business, or I don’t want to bother the cops, or I don’t want to call 911, or it’s probably nothing — just call, and if it ends up being nothing, it’s no skin off our back. It’s no big deal.”
“And give us as much information as you can,” she continues. “Whatever you know, whatever you see, share it with us. If it’s a neighbor and you know they go hunting, so they might have guns, share that. Domestic violence calls are one of the most dangerous to respond to, because there are so many unknowns. The more the officers know, the better they can respond. Knowledge is power.”
For Wendy Isom, a longtime advocate for victims of domestic violence, her hope is that heightened public awareness will translate into more programs that would help build foundations for healthy interpersonal relationships.
“I would love anything we could do to help prevent the violence from ever occurring,” she says. “Have a curriculum in high school or middle school, maybe in health class, and teach: What is respect? How do I solve a disagreement without violence? I don’t think we as a culture put a lot of money or time or effort into prevention. We’re not doing enough.”
Wendy would like to see more attention on the victims and helping them in their recovery. And stop judging them.
“We get a lot of ‘Why does the victim stay? Why don’t they come to court? Why do they let their children see this? I wouldn’t have done that if it was me.’ We as a community, as jurors, as neighbors, as citizens, put a lot of blame on victims, who are doing the best they can while navigating really difficult traumatic events. Ideally, I’d rather we ask, ‘Why do offenders offend? What can we do to come to the aid of survivors instead of judging them?’”
Victims of abuse need support, not shaming. “Just by telling them, ‘I’m here for you, I believe in you, I will help you,’ means so much,” says Wendy. “We do surveys with survivors and ask them what was most helpful, and over and over and over, it’s a human being who cared. I don’t think we’ll ever easily fix domestic violence. It’s a huge, systemic problem that needs lots of solutions, but I know anyone who treats a victim with dignity or helps them, does change the world.”
Wendy cites surveys “that show that 1 in 3 women and 1 in 5 men will be a domestic violence victim in some form in their life.” Yet one more sobering statistic. As Sgt. Johnson says, “It’s really all of our business.” Or should be.