San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
“If you put off a case for a year, victims are going to say, ‘The system didn’t care.’ ”
Federal money is available to support such teams. Tarrant County has had one for four years. Harris County’s was created three years ago, Austin’s in 2017.
For years, Bexar County failed to get on board. In 2020, the county finally established a high-risk team with a $330,000 grant from the Texas Council on Family Violence.
“We’re lagging behind,” said Patricia Castillo, co-founder of the P.E.A.C.E Initiative, a nonprofit that helps victims of family violence. “We should have been doing this work 40 years ago. We waited too long to take this seriously, and that’s why it’s out of our hands now.
“It’s not like we don’t know how these (abusers) operate. It’s not like we need a crystal ball or have to reinvent the wheel. We’ve been talking about these issues for years. Why haven’t we made progress?”
Victims aren’t supported
To protect an abuse victim and secure her cooperation, a prompt, sympathetic response by law enforcement is essential.
But in San Antonio, women beaten by spouses or boyfriends have waited days, weeks or even months for police and prosecutors to reach out with information about their cases and about support services such as counseling, legal representation and housing assistance.
In 2016, auditors looked at a random sample of domestic violence 911 calls referred to the SAPD’s Crisis Response Team, made up of sworn officers and civilian caseworkers.
Members of the team were supposed to contact victims within 24 hours of when they called 911. In 38 of 56 cases — nearly 70 percent — they did not do so within that time period, the audit found. In some cases, it took them more than 11 days to make contact.
That wasn’t the only shortcoming. In other cities, risk assessments are considered a critical tool for protecting the most vulnerable women. In SAPD, they often were viewed as an afterthought, the audit found.
The Crisis Response Team often failed to document whether it conducted a risk assessment — a questionnaire completed with the victim’s help to identify women most in danger of being killed by their abusers.
A 2017 audit reported improved response times by the team but provided no supporting statistics.
When the Express-News asked for more information, SAPD compiled a sample of 150 domestic violence cases from 2019. It showed improved response times, but the data were limited to three of SAPD’s six substations. The department said it could not provide citywide data because of discrepancies in how officers input the information and flaws in the city’s electronic records system.
Lt. Jesse Salame, a department spokesman, said detectives with expertise in domestic violence have been added to the Crisis Response Team to work nights and weekends, among other improvements.
The team’s civilian caseworkers were moved last year to the Metropolitan
Health District, the city’s public health authority, to give them better training and greater access to support services for victims. There are plans to expand their hours. The city also is adding six case management positions in Metro Health to focus on cases of severe domestic abuse.
The next key link in the chain, the district attorney’s office, also has been sporadic or ineffectual in supporting victims.
District Attorney Joe D. Gonzales said that when his term began in January 2019, it took as long as six weeks for prosecutors to reach out to the victims in domestic violence cases. Gonzales has added domestic violence prosecutors and victim liaisons to reduce such delays.
But even now, four liaisons are responsible for contacting thousands of victims every year, Gonzales said. Their workload has more than doubled over the last five years, officials at the DA’s office said this year in a memo to Bexar County Commissioners Court seeking funds to hire more personnel.
“Delays reduce the likelihood of victim cooperation, making these cases very time-sensitive,”
the officials wrote. “Victims in delayed cases often return to an abuser out of fear and lack of perceived accountability. Proving a case without victim cooperation is often impossible.”
Gloria Terry, CEO of the Texas Council on Family Violence, said time is the critical factor in successfully prosecuting domestic violence.
“The further away you get from the date of the incident, the less likely people feel engaged,” she said. “If you put off a case for a year, victims are going to say, ‘The system didn’t care.’ ”
Abusers have an out
The district attorney’s office files an average of 400 new misdemeanor domestic violence assault cases every month. Because of the sheer volume of work, the goal for prosecutors in most cases isn’t a trial. It’s a plea.
As a result, many defendants are granted deferred adjudication, which bypasses a trial, conviction and possible jail sentence. That’s how 19 percent of misdemeanor family violence assault cases filed in Bexar County courts were resolved from 2011 through 2020, according to the ExpressNews
analysis of court data.
In deferred adjudication, defendants typically plead no contest and agree to pay fines, submit to regular alcohol and drug screening, and meet other conditions.
Those conditions usually include completion of the Batterer’s Intervention and Prevention Program, or BIPP, an 18-to-20-week class (conducted online during the pandemic) that is designed to change patriarchal beliefs thought to fuel violent and controlling behavior.
There are four BIPP programs in San Antonio, all accredited by the state. Only one, offered by Family Violence Prevention Services, receives state funding. The others are for-profit businesses.
Even as BIPP has gained popularity, evidence that it actually works remains thin: Nearly 60 percent of abusers in Bexar County failed to complete the program during the county’s 2017 fiscal year. Those who drop out are more than twice as likely to re-offend, compared with those who finish, one Texas study found.
Offenders who fail to finish the program are allowed to re-enroll