RFC: Family Violence.
Here’s the situation: I go to a family disturbance the other day and I first come in contact with the victim, I’ll call her “Vickie”, who had run to a friend’s house down the street after the alleged incident. Vickie states that “Suspect Stu”, her common-law husband, had assaulted her.
Vickie says that she had played this trick where she got a friend to pull some sort of prank phone call on her neighbor-lady to find out if Stu was …Let’s us the term “having sexual relations with” -said neighbor-lady. Apparently, how ever the phone call trick worked (I never figured this out), Vickie thought it indicated that Stu was, indeed, having some sort of affair with the neighbor lady.
So anyway; Vickie calls the neighbor-lady from her (Vickie’s) home phone and, in the presence of Stu, confronts the neighbor-lady with the “proof”. Stu gets mad and assaults Vickie to get the phone from her.
Vickie complains of pain and tells me: “Look at my back, it’s all red.”
Now, Vickie’s back is indeed red, but Vickie’s entire body is red. She’s just a very red person. I thought it was a little funny that she said it was red. She might as well have said that it was all covered in skin. But the meat of this part is that I see no visible injury. None, nada.
BTW: A “complaint of pain” is quite enough to make the injury element for assault.
So anyway, I go to the residence and talk to Stu. Stu tells approximately the same story (with reasonable allowances for POV), except that it ends with him taking the phone and Vickie running out the door.
I used my maddest interview and interrogation skillz to try to get some indication that Stu had, in fact; pushed, poked, prodded, slapped, towel-popped, kidney-punched, folded, spindled or otherwise assaulted Vickie. Stu held firm to his story, and I saw no indication that he was lying.
Stu did, however, have a couple of class ‘C’ warrants so I sacked him up and stored him in the back of the car while I went to talk to Vickie again.
I had Vickie fill out and sign an Assault Victim’s Statement, gave her the State-mandated forms. A couple of motor officers had shown up to back me up and I had one of them come in and look at Vickie’s back with me. Neither of us saw any visible injury. I gave Vickie a number to call to have a Victim’s Services worker come out and photograph her injuries if anything appeared.
I mentioned my plan to book Stu in for the warrants and write up the assault to the motor guys and they said that I would surely end up in prison if I did that. “You have to arrest in a family violence case.” they said in unison.
Now, I know you can’t take advice on police work from motor cops, but since I haven’t done any real police work in a long-long time I called my sergeant to inquire as to whether the Constitution had been suspended in cases of Family Violence. Sarge said that I didn’t have to arrest, but I needed to explain very carefully in my report why I didn’t.
So I duly explained in my report that I had no particular reason to believe one of them over the other and, in fact, the preponderance of the evidence (being a lack of evidence) had to go to Stu. I turned in all the paperwork and went on with my life.
This morning Sarge gives me a print out of an email he got from some dude in Internal Affairs telling him that he needs to counsel me on my behavior and saying how lucky I am that he didn’t assault her again. The email wasn’t rude or anything, the writer said I had probably made an “honest mistake”. I go over the whole deal with Sarge again and he doesn’t see the problem. Later today (when people are awake) I call the Family Violence Unit Sergeant and inquire about the case. Interestingly enough he’s familiar with it. Sergeant(FV) says that a complaint of pain constitutes an assault and since it was Family Violence I should have arrested the dude. I replied that I was familiar with the elements of assault, but I didn’t feel that I had probable cause to make a warrant-less arrest. Sergeant(FV) explained to me that the victim signs the statement and so “it’s on her, not us”.

I may be overlooking something important, I may not understand the concept of “probable cause” as well as I think I do, I may be just plain stupid. Maybe I’ll understand it in the morning, but I really, deep in my heart, still think I’m right. Perhaps someone will enlighten me.