WESTFIELD – Readers who note a significant drop in the number of police reports involving incidents of domestic violence may be excused for reaching the obvious – but erroneous – conclusion that the city has suddenly become safer.
The apparent decrease in the number of publicly reported instances of domestic violence is illusionary and is a consequence, presumably unintended, of a new act relative to domestic violence which went into effect as soon as Gov. Deval Patrick signed it into law Aug. 8.
Police departments have long been required to “make, keep and maintain a daily log, written in a form that can be easily understood, recording, in chronological order, all responses to valid complaints received, crimes reported, the names, addresses of persons arrested and the charges against such persons arrested.” Those logs have been public records and have been “available without charge to the public during regular business hours and at all other reasonable times.”
That changed with the passage of Chapter 260 of the Acts of 2014, an Act Relative to Domestic Violence. The new law makes a number of changes to help ensure the safety of victims of domestic violence and features elements to prevent their identification.
One of the provisions to shield the victim’s identity also shields the suspect because identification of the suspect could tend to also identify a victim who is closely associated with the suspect.
Previously, police were required to acknowledge when a suspect was arrested but, with the new law, they are now prohibited from reporting any arrest involving domestic violence.
The new law requires that all incidents involving responses to reports of “domestic violence, rape or sexual assault”, “concerning the arrest of a person for assault, assault and battery or violation of a protective order where the victim is a family or household member” or “which pertains to a handicapped individual who is physically or mentally incapacitated to the degree that said person is confined to a wheelchair or is bedridden or requires the use of a device designed to provide said person with mobility” shall be kept in a separate log which will not be a public record and entries in the new log may not disclosed to the public.
Westfield Police Capt. Hipolito Nunez said yesterday that “the log will no longer reflect domestic (incidents)” so incidents of domestic disturbance, protective order violations or anything else with a ‘domestic’ tag will not appear in the publicly available log.
He also pointed out that officers will have to be vigilant as some calls initially labeled, for example, ‘noise complaints’ which are found to involve domestic altercations will have to re-labeled to reflect the domestic component and will thus be required to be expunged from the public log and shunted to the new ancillary log.
The new log will be available only to victims, their counselors, their lawyers, other persons specifically authorized by a victim, law enforcement officers, district attorneys or assistant district attorneys and persons authorized to set bail for suspects.
Capt. Michael McCabe, who serves as the public information officer for the Westfield police, said that, in compliance with the new law, he has stopped reporting all instances of alleged violations of protective orders, all disturbance calls with an element of domestic violence and all arrests involving domestic violence.
Persons who are arrested due to an incident of domestic violence will return to public view after they are arraigned in district court.
Carol J. Kantany-Casartello, the clerk-magistrate at Westfield District Court, said that the case files which she administers and which are open to inspection by the public, will not change due to the new law.
