A few months ago, a woman found herself in what turned out to be momentary trouble. She and her boyfriend were fighting, and their fights, on occasion, tended toward physical violence. He was blocking her from leaving, trapping her in her own home. She needed help, so she called Metro.
While the officers were en route, the woman managed to free herself, but not before biting and scratching her boyfriend. Once she got away, she thought she was in the clear. Over time, she and her boyfriend made amends and everything seemed back to normal. Until she received a certified letter saying she was being charged with domestic battery and had to appear in court.
"I was totally shocked," she says. "And when I told [my boyfriend] about it, he didn't know anything about it."
The boyfriend didn't press charges. The woman didn't press charges. But the state did—they have to in cases of domestic violence. And because the woman fled the scene, the man with the scratch and bite marks is deemed the victim.
"I don't agree with that; I mean it wasn't a domestic-abuse case," she says in a telephone interview. "It was an argument, and he wouldn't let me go and so I bit him, he let me go, I called the cops, he stopped blocking my way to get out and I left. It wasn't something that I feel I need to go to Shade Tree or something like that."
But it doesn't matter whether or not she considers herself or her boyfriend a victim. Someone has to be charged, and because she wasn't at the scene, she looks like the perpetrator. Sergeant Rick Barela, a public-information officer with Metro, explains it simply. The cops investigated.
Definition of "investigation," according to dictionary.com: "The act of investigating; the process of inquiring into or following up; research; study; inquiry, esp. patient or thorough inquiry or examination; as, the investigations of the philosopher and the mathematician; the investigations of the judge, the moralist."
"The officers have to act on probable cause. If she fled the scene, and he's the only one remaining there, and the only information comes from him, that this violent fight took place and she bit me and she scratched me and then she fled the area, that's the only information that the officers have to act on."
Domestic violence is a zero-tolerance crime in Nevada. And the events that led up to the woman's flight have no bearing, Barela says, because she never called back and told them what happened.
"She never contacted us. She never went back to another location and called and said this is what happened to me. He becomes the victim in this case, acting on all of the information that was provided to the police. So what happens then is all these reports go to the domestic-violence unit, they review these reports and they say OK, at this point we've met all of the state requirements. We've done our report, we've done our investigation, it doesn't matter whether he wants to press charges or not. Acting on the information they have, we have probable cause to believe that a crime was committed, and she's a suspect. So they issue a warrant for her arrest at that point. Does that make more sense now?"
Sense, if you mean taking information from only one side and not inquiring, or, say, investigating the safety of the woman who originally called. Maybe the cops just need a new definition of "investigation."