I saw where he aimed. It was not even close to me. He spent the night in jail and due to his record WE have suffered financial loss for over 20 years and will continue to do so because of the money he wasn’t able to make/jobs he couldn’t get and put towards retirement or increased social security. Thanks for wishing that on us, the inflation is really dinging us in the wallet.
You’re lucky his temper tantrum wasn’t more costly (in terms of health and money). He gets zero sympathy from me.
Lundy Bancroft, in his well known book “Why Does He Do That?” makes a very valid and illuminating point–that men who claim they were so angry they “couldn’t help themselves” from doing violent acts are proven to be full of shit in that no matter how pissed off they get at work they don’t make the same moves on their boss. No, they save up all their boss anger, bring it home and then pick a fight with their wife in order to have an excuse to be violent with impunity. Anyone throwing something capable of doing actual physical damage is doing it with either the intention of doing said damage or of creating the impression in the receiver that it was just bad luck or he “didn’t mean to” actually hit anyone…this time. But the implication is there. People who do this shit absolutely deserve their arrest records.
There is no way that I can say anything that won’t be turned around, so I am going to leave this thread.
(As a motorhead, my response to frustration is to fling tools on the concrete. I probably need anger management and jail time too.)
I was hoping I would never see this thread resurrected again. Damn.
Maybe I just shouldn’t read it. Nah, can’t do that!
I can.
Moderating:
Both of these comments can be construed as threadshitting. Stop now, please.
I’m firmly opposed to arresting the victim simply because they were the first to hit in the most recent altercation. (With better training, Moab police would probably have been able to elicit the information that Laundry had earlier slapped Petito and had, in fact, engineered the altercation in which she hit him.) The idea that it “forces” that victim to consider an RSO is paternalistic, short-sighted and misguided: it supposes that the victim needs a push to file an RSO and ignores the reasons victims are reluctant to do so, e.g., that the RSO will enrage the abuser, who will come after them despite the RSO. I’d like to see the text of the Oregon law mandating this, as I can’t find it.
The Moab police are perhaps not to blame for their lack of adequate training, yet that doesn’t mean they acted appropriately.> “The crux here is that they got pulled over by the police and the police aligned themselves with the abuser,” said [criminologist Molly] Dragiewicz. “One of the things that was really interesting about the police interaction in this case was that the police were very polite to her on the surface. But then they were also completely dismissive of what she had to say.”…
“They threatened her with being incarcerated. Think about calling your parents when you’re 20-something years old and telling them, ‘Hey, Mom and Dad, I’m in jail in another state. Can you bail me out?’ She would have been mortified,” Dragiewicz said. “And they let her sit there and think that’s what was happening for quite a long time. … It all sends a message to the victim that the officer’s aligning himself with your perpetrator.” (Source.)
And not just to the victim. Laundry now had something else to hold over Petito’s head: SHE was the crazy, violent one, not him. Had Moab police been trained to identify coercive control, the stop probably would have gone very differently. The presence of a victim’s advocate, who would have been trained to spot coercive control, would also have been helpful.
Which is why it’s so troubling that the take away for the officers involved and their peers, apparently, is that they should have arrested Petito. Which is completely the wrong way to course correct. It is perhaps illustrative of the sort of predicament front line officers find them in. On the one hand, broader civil society desires and expects them to be prepared to act as social workers and de-escalate complex situations as much as possible, but on the other their departments and policymakers seem not to be too interested in nuance and shades of gray (and, FWIW, many of us may not be either: judgment calls are great, until of course the police make what may be viewed with the benefit of hindsight as the wrong call, or data shows they exercise discretion disproportionately one way or the other with regard to certain socioeconomic characteristics).
As much as the police here probably did do a less than optimal job of identifying the underlying problem—what was really going on between Laundrie and Petito—they did spare a pretty substantial amount of time trying to just talk things out and in the end they at least did not arrest Petito. More than that, they separated them for the night.
So, what the police needed was to perhaps lean more into the social worker realm (for which they may not have been well-trained), but what this report seems to be suggesting is that they’d have been better off just showing up, taking the initial report, and slapping cuffs on Petito to haul her off for abusing Laundrie.
What does “RSO” mean?
I’m guessing “restraining order”.
I’m hoping we can do better than a guess.
Perhaps nelliebly, who used this initialism without defining it, can explain it for me.
Thank you in advance.
Right. The officers violated the mandatory law that required that they arrest the person who turned out to be the victim in this matter. Again, you use “they.” There was no evidence in their possession that Laundrie had done a single thing wrong, so the idea that an arrest of him was even a remote possibility is not even on the table. With what should he have been charged, based upon the evidence in the possession of the officers on the scene?
Indeed. The mandatory arrest law harmed you, the victim, immeasurably. The law also took away your power of agency and treated you like a small child, unable to determine how to proceed with a terrible and abusive relationship. It took money out of your pocket.
Yes. Absolutely correct.
Same question as above. When they have no evidence, not even an accusation, that Laundrie committed an assault or battery, what should police officers do? They are powerless to even detain a person when there is no reasonable articulable suspicion of a crime. You can say that they should have had a better communication system so that the one accusation of Laundrie hitting her was passed to them, but that is more of a general criticism of any system and is not specific to domestic battery policy.
That is the part that astounds me. The officers were bad and need additional training because they could have prevented this…by arresting the victim! Instead of admitting that the laws are a sledgehammer hitting a fly in the best of circumstances, and cause absurd results in these situations, people are doubling down and saying that the law should have been enforced more strictly, even when presented with a specific absurd result.
One Capt. Brandon Ratcliffe of the Price City Police Department conducted an official independent review of Moab City PD’s handling of the case. Here is the 100 page PDF released by Moab City. You’ll want to look at p. 13 on (p. 16 of the PDF), which should come right up from the link.
He goes step by step what the police did, based on the reports and his own interviews, and tells you what he thinks they did right and wrong. Of relevance here he argues that both officers on the scene had a mistaken belief that the assault statute required intent, and based on that belief misclassified the case as a mental/emotional health break rather than domestic assault. One officer goes at length in the interview in how he determined that Ms. Petito did not have intent to cause bodily harm, and how intent is implicit in attempted assault; Capt. Ratcliffe’s opinion is that the officer made the mistake of only reading section a) of the assault statute, providing for attempted assault, whereas section b) for actual assault does not require intent.
I explained to Officer Pratt the four culpabilities and their levels. I also read Officer Pratt the assault code in full. Officer Pratt said, “that does change things.” Officer Pratt stated he is sure he has read that part of the assault code before and it “has to be addressed.” Officer Pratt said he probably got side tracked with the bodily injury portion of the assault code and went and read the definition for bodily injury, neglecting to scroll down and read the rest of the assault statute. Officer Pratt said, “And if I did that’s a mistake and it may have changed our decisions but I can’t say that even here now, until I read it and really think about it for a few minutes, because I do take the act of putting people in handcuffs and taking their freedom and giving them charges very seriously and I usually spend a little bit of time reading up on it first and then trying to figure out if that’s going to fly. So yes, that second part you said I would admit that could have changed what we decided to do but I would still have to look it over and think about it.”
In a subsequent interview with Officer Robbins, I asked how he reached the conclusion that an assault did not take place. Officer Robbins stated he observed the code Officer Pratt showed him and, in that code, it said, “with the intent to cause harm.” Officer Robbins stated, “I went with that one because she said that she didn’t have the intent to harm him.” I asked Officer Robbins if he just went with what he was told by Officer Pratt or if he actually observed the code himself. Officer Robbins stated Officer Pratt “showed me the code.” Officer Robbins added again that the assault code says, “with the intent to cause bodily injury.” I read the assault code in full and asked Officer Robbins if anywhere in the code it said the word, “intent.” Officer Robbins said, “it might have been somewhere else I’m not sure.”
~Max
The officers had discretion to determine who is the “predominant physical aggressor”, but not unlimited discretion. The law states,
If a law enforcement officer receives complaints of domestic violence from two or more opposing persons, the officer shall evaluate each complaint separately to identify the predominant physical aggressor. If the officer determines that one person was the predominant physical aggressor, the officer need not arrest the other person alleged to have committed domestic violence. In determining who the predominant aggressor was, the officer shall consider:
- Any prior complaints of domestic violence;
- The relative severity of injuries inflicted on each person;
- The likelihood of future injury to each of the parties; and
- Whether one of the parties acted in self-defense.
In this case,
- no prior complaints
- very minor injuries, in the opinions of the officers and civilians
- no information provided at the time that would indicate likeliness of future injury
- Statements taken from both persons involved and from a witness indicated that Mr. Laundrie acted in self defense
Now the problems that can be addressed in future cases. There was a second witness who called 9-1-1 and reported seeing a man hit a woman. That witness’s statement was never taken. And apparently in Ms. Petito’s statement she said Mr. Laundrie had tried to grab her face and ended up scratching her cheek, but the officers didn’t follow up by asking Mr. Laundrie or either witness about that.
ETA: Also, from prev cite,
I asked Officer Pratt again about the statement in his report about nobody reporting Brian had hit Gabby despite the statement from Gabby that Brian had grabbed her face and caused a scratch. I asked Officer Pratt if he didn’t consider someone grabbing a face a “strike” or a “hit.” Officer Pratt said he didn’t consider a grab to be either of those. Officer Pratt gave examples of “a hit being a hit, a slap being a slap,” etc. Officer Pratt explained that he believed it was important when we interview people to figure out what kind of contact was made and explain that contact. Officer Pratt said “maybe we could have done better at this.” Officer Pratt said that although he doesn’t consider a grab of the face a “strike,” he stated it could be an assault. Officer Pratt said it’s important to describe the contact and the circumstances surrounding the contact.
~Max
Question: Is coercive control trivial to identify with not-particularly-intensive training?
I have a general impression that some people are kind of expecting virtual clairvoyance out of the Moab officers, Maybe if I learn more about what people are actually expecting from the officers, I can come around and agree that it was reasonable to expect in hindsight that the Moab officers should have somehow “done more”.
The law says identify and arrest the “predominant physical aggressor”. In addition to the difficulty of identifying coercive control, would that change who is supposed to be arrested?
~Max
Mandatory arrest statutes are controversial, and the research on outcomes is not conclusive. But if you’re going to continue to rant against them at least make some effort to understand the thinking behind them, and acknowledge that there are good reasons why domestic violence has been treated as a special case for decades. Historically police showed reluctance to intervene in “private family matters” - usually the LEO would not personally witness the violence; often the psychological impact of domestic abuse means that the victim is reluctant to press charges.
Clearly it’s a difficult problem - no policy, including mandatory arrest, will produce an optimal result in every circumstance. But the question is whether mandatory arrest does in fact tend to produce a better outcome in breaking cycles of domestic violence than allowing police broad discretion on arrest.
That’s because it’s a “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario. Make an arrest simply because it’s mandatory? The result might end up as described by @JaneDoe42. Don’t make an arrest? The cops are to blame if the abuse continues.
Yes, it stands for restraining order. I thought, incorrectly, that this was common usage. My apologies.