Gaps exist in police manpower, laws, aid

Saturday, Nov. 27, 2004 | 12:35 p.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

November 27 - 28, 2004

Just past midnight on April 26, 2002, a casino employee armed with a handgun climbed through the backyard window of his estranged wife's Las Vegas home.

The woman told the Clark County Grand Jury that he disconnected her telephone and went up to her second-story bedroom.

With her two young sons sleeping in adjoining bedrooms, the woman awoke to a gun pointed at her head. The wiry 43-year-old assailant, Eric Chan, had allegedly beaten her in the past, causing her to obtain a temporary protective order against him. They had separated and she changed the locks on her front door to keep Chan away. But that did not stop him.

Once in her bedroom he took her cellular phone, grabbed her by the hair, and forced her into a walk-in closet. After complaining that she had custody of their children, he slapped her in the face and kicked her in the stomach.

"I started screaming and yelling, and he started beating me up, saying 'shut up,' " she told the grand jury.

He then shoved her down the stairs and led her to the garage, where he handcuffed her and forced her into the passenger seat of her car. She yelled for help, but to no avail.

Chan drove to a nearby church parking lot. But when he saw that the parking lot was brightly lit, he drove to a secluded location in an adjoining neighborhood, away from street lights.

"He was telling me that, 'You never want to talk to me, bitch, now we are going to talk,' " she recalled.

Chan began sweating profusely as he threatened to kill her and then take his own life. But after calling his brother over a cell phone, a conversation that took place in Cantonese, the Hong Kong native had a sudden change of heart and promised not to harm her if she didn't contact police.

"He reminded me again, 'Don't say nothing about the gun because this time I'll hurt you, and I'm going to hurt the kids, too,' " she told the grand jury.

He drove her back to her home, uncuffed her and took off, only to return a short time later. Only this time, Metro police were at the home, checking the crime scene and completing paperwork in her kitchen. When Chan arrived at the front door, police emerged from the house with guns drawn and arrested him without incident. He denied owning a gun, though four were registered in his name.

By the time the grand jury returned an indictment against Chan for first-degree kidnapping and burglary, both with a deadly weapon, he and his wife had divorced.

After initially pleading not guilty, Chan accepted a plea agreement in February 2003 in District Court to second-degree kidnapping with use of a deadly weapon. As part of his plea agreement, his sentence -- two consecutive terms of four to 10 years in prison -- was suspended and he was placed on five years of probation.

District Judge John McGroarty said he could have overruled the plea agreement and sent Chan to prison. But the Nevada Division of Parole & Probation recommended probation because he didn't fire the gun, his ex-wife's physical injuries were minor, he had no prior criminal convictions, he was gainfully employed, he had a college degree and he had followed the Family Court's instruction when it came to supervised visitations with his children.

"There were at least nine letters of support from church leaders, employers and friends on his behalf," McGroarty said. "Second-degree kidnapping is a terrible crime. But there were no red flags in his file that would have recommended against probation."

As a condition of Chan's probation, he was to undergo counseling and a mental health evaluation and wear an electronic monitoring device for one year. Although the evaluation revealed that he was at low risk of being a repeat offender, he was prohibited from seeing his ex-wife.

But as victims of domestic violence and advocates who fight for their welfare have come to realize, no one has devised a perfect way to prevent the likes of Chan from striking again.

Fast forward to about 3 a.m. on Oct. 28 when his ex-wife and her boyfriend were shopping at the Wal-Mart on Rainbow Boulevard near Smoke Ranch Road.

As she opened the back hatch of her sports utility vehicle, there was Chan, wearing a mask and armed with a gun. He was still on probation, but that obviously did not matter to him. He shot his ex-wife at least twice from inside the vehicle.

With Chan in pursuit the woman ran toward the Wal-Mart and collapsed at the entrance. He shot her once more, returned to her car and killed himself.

With bullet wounds to her right shoulder and arm the victim was admitted to University Medical Center in serious condition, but was released from the hospital four days later. She will never have to face Chan again.

But this incident and others like it help explain why there is plenty of frustration on the part of advocates, police officers and prosecutors when it comes to protecting victims of domestic violence.

"You're never going to have any system that can change human nature," McGroarty said. "There are always cases that fall through the cracks."

Domestic violence was not taken seriously as a crime in Nevada until the 1980s. In Nevada, as in other states, many laws have been passed to protect victims and prosecute offenders.

But domestic violence professionals say they know of no way to develop a system that completely protects someone from violence without violating the rights of potential offenders.

"There have been cases where a victim has done everything by the letters to protect herself, and she ends up dead anyway," Amber Batchelor, special programs director for Safe Nest, a shelter for battered women, said. "It's one of those things where there is no nice, clean answer. Every domestic violence victim is a potential homicide victim, but we don't have crystal balls."

The result is a system of protection in Clark County that domestic violence advocates say has several gaps. They say these include insufficient police manpower and training, Nevada laws that aren't tough enough on offenders, and the hardships involved when battered women seek housing and financial assistance to gain independence.

Frustrating issue

Part of the reason domestic violence cannot be easily eradicated has to do with the belief that many offenders learned their violent behavior as children, making it a difficult cycle to break.

Most perplexing to individuals who have never experienced domestic violence is why the victim, most often female, stays in the relationship, even after repeated beatings.

Among the reasons offered are: the abuser, more often than not, is the family bread winner, making the victim economically dependent; the abuser, over time, develops power and control through physical and psychological means in a way that robs the victim of her self-esteem; and in cases where children are involved, the victim often doesn't have the means to care for them on her own.

"The women have been controlled, and they don't know how to break that control," Julie Proctor, executive director of Safe House, another shelter for battered women, said. "A lot of these women have never worked."

One survivor, Wendy Wilkinson of Las Vegas, eventually broke away from a violent relationship, earned a college degree and became manager of the Family Violence Intervention Program at Family Court, where she assists victims in applying for protective orders.

Wilkinson's bout with domestic violence began in the mid-1970s after she moved to Las Vegas from Michigan while in her early 20s. Working as a food services employee at a casino, she met and married a man. The first two years of the relationship went fine "until he started making me feel like I was doing something wrong," she said.

He began chipping away at her self-esteem, initially through verbal abuse and then through physical attacks. Because Wilkinson had no other family members in Las Vegas, she also felt isolated.

"I remembered how he would fondly talk about how his mother prepared salmon, so I fixed a salmon for him and pork chops for myself," Wilkinson said. "He didn't like that I wasn't eating fish so he took a plate and pushed it into my face. Then he pushed me into a wall and choked me until I passed out.

"I convinced myself that I had done something wrong, that if I had eaten the salmon everything would have been all right. You learn to be at fault. You start to question yourself."

Over the next 13 years, she left him seven times but always returned. She never thought of calling the police, she said, because this was going on in the late 1970s and early 1980s when domestic violence was not looked upon as a crime in Nevada.

For Wilkinson, the violence came sporadically. The worst attack was toward the end of their marriage, when they had an argument over $10 that she had. He demanded the money, even though she intended to use part of it for baby formula for her then 3-month-old son.

When her husband didn't get his way, he broke her arm.

"We both heard that arm snap, but only I heard my heart break," she said.

She had to drive herself to the hospital, baby in tow.

"The nurse at the hospital asked me what happened and I said I tripped," Wilkinson said.

Even though she was still in denial, Wilkinson went to a shelter for battered women and received counseling.

"The counselors told me that no one deserved to be treated like this," she said. "They said, 'Why worry about losing him?' They put thoughts in my head that I was a worthwhile person so I thought, 'Why am I dealing with him and this stress?' "

Even with the counseling, Wilkinson returned to him for one more year before finally divorcing him in 1988.

Police response

As Southern Nevada's population grows, so has the volume of domestic violence cases handled by Metro Police. Metro responded to 19,608 domestic-related calls last year, up from 18,228 in 2002 and 17,886 in 2001.

But Sgt. Chuck Pierce of Metro's domestic violence unit said the ability to handle calls in a timely and proper fashion has been hampered by a shortage of police officers. That is one reason why Metro urged voters to pass Question 9 earlier this month to support an increase in county sales taxes for more police. Voters did pass it by a narrow margin. The Nevada Legislature must authorize the increase, and it must also be approved by the Clark County Commission before taking effect.

Pierce has 12 detectives and three civilian advocates. Of these, only one -- an advocate -- speaks Spanish. To investigate domestic violence cases properly, Pierce said his unit ideally would have 20 detectives and five advocates, nearly double the current staff.

"Our caseload is overwhelming," Pierce said. "Our detectives right now each run 160 to 230 cases a month. They should only be carrying right at 100 cases a month. We work our tails off for the victims. We're overloaded, but our guys don't snivel and complain.

"If I could get two Spanish-speaking detectives, that would be outstanding. We would also like to have at least one more advocate who speaks Spanish."

Against this backdrop is the fact that Nevada is not exactly a safe haven from domestic violence, according to a study from the nonprofit Washington-based Violence Policy Center. The study, using 2002 FBI data, reported that there were 27 female homicides in Nevada that year at the hands of male offenders.

Nevada, with 2.54 females per 100,000 killed by males, ranked fourth in the nation in 2002, trailing only Alaska (4.84 female murder victims per 100,000), Louisiana (2.91) and New Mexico (2.66). The national rate was 1.37.

The Violence Policy Center, which advocates handgun control, found nationally that females were nine times more likely to be killed by a male they knew than by a stranger. And in 61 percent of the cases where the victims knew their offenders, the killers were either husbands or intimate acquaintances.

In Nevada, all 27 female victims knew their assailants, and 60 percent were killed with guns.

"There's a lot of underreporting of domestic violence," Pierce said. "We know that not all cases of domestic violence are called in. A lot of people believe that what goes on in their own home is their own business."

Examples of underreporting involve cases where abusers are citizens but victims are illegal aliens, Valentina Bonifasi, a former domestic violence advocate at Shade Tree, another shelter, said.

"A lot of ladies who are illegal won't call police because of threats from the men that they will call the Immigration and Naturalization Service and that the INS will kick them out of the country," Bonifasi said.

What many of these women do not realize is that under the Violence Against Women Act, they may qualify for permanent residency in the United States, she said.

"You don't have to have legal status to call for help," Bonifasi said.

While Metro continues to work on the speed with which it answers 911 telephone calls, Pierce said additional police would help Metro reduce its response time.

"Right now it can take three minutes or longer, depending on when the call comes in and where our officers are," Pierce said. "What can happen to the victim in that three minutes? A lot.

"If we had more officers out there, the crime rate would go down. With more police officers on the street we would make more arrests."

It can be frustrating for victims, too, when they call police and the perpetrator is not hauled to jail.

Former Safe House resident Karen (not her real name), a 28-year-old mother of two who moved out on her own last year, said she called police dozens of times from 1999 through 2003, but that they only arrested her ex-husband twice.

"When he started drinking and using drugs he was always saying that if I went to my mom's, he would kidnap one of my kids," Karen said. "He said that if he couldn't kill me, he would take my kids to Mexico."

Despite the constant verbal threats, Karen said she was told repeatedly by police that they could not do anything to him unless he actually did something to her. The first time they arrested him, for domestic battery, he spent a week in jail.

"He told me he would change and that everything would work out, but it never did," Karen said.

They got back together and things were good for about a week before they went downhill. In one incident he killed Karen's dog. On another occasion, after they separated, he came over to her apartment dressed like a soldier and burned her clothes. Then in June 2003, she said he kidnapped one of her kids and spent more time in jail before being released after the charges were dropped for reasons that remain unclear to her.

Earlier this year she believes her ex-husband fled to Mexico with outstanding warrants for his arrest on other charges.

"If the police catch him, I hope he spends a lot of time in prison," Karen said.

Law enforcement is frustrated, too, because there is no centralized computer system that enables local police agencies to readily share information with prosecutors and the courts. That is why there are many instances when an alleged abuser is arrested, appears in court and then is released without Metro's knowledge.

A centralized computer system, which has been proposed by the courts but has not yet been implemented, would enable Metro to track individual cases easier, Pierce said.

"We could also cut our paper costs in half and hire at least two more employees in my unit," he said.

What advocates would also like to see are better-trained police officers when it comes to recognizing the difference between the primary aggressors and the victims of domestic violence.

Proctor said attempts by Safe House to offer that training to local police departments have failed so far.

"A lot of the problem for police is a lack of time and staffing," Proctor said. "We would like to see them have two or three days of intensive training so they can determine the primary aggressor. A lot of women are fighting back, but getting arrested when they're just trying to defend themselves."

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