Seeking Help From Men Who Abuse

by Tanya Brannan

Since Macias, Purple Berets have conducted at least seven other domestic violence homicide investigations in four different counties, including San Francisco. As in Macias, in all but one of those investigations (the case of a woman who killed her batterer, who was a methamphetamine dealer) we found a number of previous calls to police. In most of those calls arrests weren't made; in the few instances where the batterer was arrested, charges were rarely if ever filed by district attorneys.

How do we explain this utter and deadly failure of police to enforce domestic violence laws?

• A huge percentage of cops are batterers   Three separate studies conducted in recent years across the United States found a very high incidence of domestic violence in law enforcement families. According to Penny Harrington, first female police chief of a major U.S. city and retired director of the National Center for Women and Policing, "In all three studies, 40 percent of the police admit to using violence in their own homes during the past year... So the chances that a batterer is going to respond to a domestic violence call are quite high."

• Recruiting  Police forces tend to recruit young men from other police agencies, the military and at sporting events. This self-selects a pool of relatively brutal white males with training in and a fascination with the use of physical violence.

• Nearly 90% of police officers nationwide are men   While all the evidence shows that female police officers are much better at handling domestic violence and sexual assault calls than men, the barriers to women becoming police officers are huge. From intentionally gender-based physical requirements to male-biased psychological exams, and even prohibitions against ever having received welfare benefits in some departments, women are washed out of law enforcement hiring at an alarming rate. Those few women who do make it through the hiring and training process cite the biggest cause of stress on the job as the constant harassment by their male co-workers. And that harassment can turn deadly, as when male officers consciously refuse to back up female officers when a call turns dangerous.

• Police Culture   A great number of police are attracted to law enforcement with visions of cracking heads and Hollywood-style car chases. The majority of their training focuses on the use of physical force, aggressive and intimidating interrogation techniques, and target practice. By contrast, domestic violence and sexual assault investigations require extensive interviews, often with a terrified woman and her young, screaming children. The interview techniques are vastly different from those used in interrogating a violent criminal, requiring great sensitivity, gently drawing out painful and embarrassing facts from the traumatized family.

• Too much paperwork   Because in the past police officers left to their own discretion routinely failed to even write up domestic violence calls, legislation was enacted in California in 1996 that specifically mandates what must be done in a DV investigation. The law requires that written reports include complete interviews with family members and neighbors, photographs of injuries and of the crime scene, a detailed history of prior violence in the family, capturing the 911 tape and other provisions to guarantee a complete (and thus prosecutable) record of the incident. Under these new regulations, investigating domestic violence calls take time -- sometimes a couple of hours. What we've found increasingly since the new laws took effect are incidents of extreme violence and threats written up as a "dog barking" call, for example, or disturbing the peace. No muss, no fuss.

One of the people we focused on as we questioned potential witnesses to the sheriff's misconduct was Deputy Mark Lopez. At the time, Lopez was the only deputy in the Sonoma substation who was even marginally fluent in Spanish; thus it was Lopez who most often responded to Teresa's calls for law enforcement. On the February 23, 1996 call to the Sheriff's office, it is Lopez who can be heard saying, "I can't keep filing a report every time she calls."

But Lopez had two domestic violence restraining orders filed against him. One was by his ex-wife who detailed his "violent and hostile behavior," his attempts to hide their children from her, and his obsessive need to control "any and all situations."

More chilling was the second restraining order, filed a year before Macias' death. In her sworn declaration, a female Sonoma County probation officer who had a dating relationship with Lopez writes of his violent nature and threats that he would "make me pay." The declaration continues:

ON 3-31-95 I RECEIVED A PHONE CALL FROM MR. LOPEZ AT MY PLACE OF WORK. HE SAID, 'IT'S NOT OVER YET, BITCH; GOD IS GOING TO PUNISH YOU.' THEN ON 04-04-95 MR. LOPEZ LEFT A NOTE ON MY CAR THAT SAID "YOU WILL DIE BITCH.'"

The Internal Affairs (IA) investigation into this incident concluded that Lopez had done nothing to violate Sheriff's Dept. policy and no disciplinary action was taken. This was, we were told, only one of eight IA investigations into Lopez's conduct by the time of the Macias case, yet incredibly Mark Lopez was still on the job.

Even beyond that, Casey Howard had consistently issued rulings of "unfounded" to complaints of sex discrimination and sexual harassment lodged by a number of female deputies in the department. This was a time when the sheriff's office literally had more sexual harassment complaints than female deputies -- 9 complaints with only 7 remaining females in a department totaling 228 sworn deputies -- hardly a bastion of women's equality.

By June, 1997, Howard had been recently promoted to captain of patrol and thus was virtually running the department's law enforcement operation. It was then that Howard had his own brush with domestic violence.

On June 10th, the headline in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat read "Sheriff's captain runs over wife." Reportedly, Howard and his wife were returning from a party in the next county when Casey ran over his wife's head in their driveway. Ms. Howard was hospitalized for head injuries including a broken nose, cheek fractures and facial injuries, but survived. When his fellow officers finally alcohol-tested Casey Howard four hours later, he still tested well over the legal limit and was arrested for drunk driving.

Although drunk driving resulting in an injury is an automatic felony in California, one day later Howard was back at work running the Sonoma County sheriff's department. Weeks passed before misdemeanor drunk driving charges were filed by the Marin County district attorney's office. No domestic violence investigation was ever conducted, and no disciplinary action was taken by the Sonoma County sheriff. Following repeated and insistent demonstrations by Purple Berets, Howard announced to his troops the following March that "in the interest of the department" he would be taking early retirement.

But it was Mark's brother, Steve, who was linked to the most serious abuse in the family. Also a Sonoma County Sheriff's deputy, Steve Lopez was routinely responding to domestic violence calls in the conduct of his job on a daily basis, despite a restraining order requested by his wife after she was hospitalized with head and facial injuries, including a broken ear drum.

I turned the restraining order over to Dan Noyes, an investigative reporter with San Francisco KGO-TV, then preparing a second report into the Macias case. Only after Noyes presented the restraining order on camera to Capt. Casey Howard was any action brought against Steve Lopez.

And so it was that a full year after his wife's beating, with the media attention making a continued cover-up impossible, that a criminal investigation was launched by the Sheriff's Dept. into Steve Lopez's attack on his wife. As a result, felony domestic violence charges were filed -- the first to be brought against a sheriff's deputy to anyone's recollection.

After a highly public trial, Lopez was found guilty of felony domestic violence, and fired from the department. Because of recent federal law prohibiting police officers convicted of domestic violence from carrying a gun, Steve Lopez can never again be a police officer.