Domestic terrors
BY DAVID GAMBACORTA & DANA
DIFILIPPO, Daily News Staff Writers
THE CHILDREN sobbed while they
watched.
The shouting had given way to
the sickening sound of fury meeting flesh as their father started beating their
mother, wrapping his hands around her neck, the terror spilling from one room
of their North Philly home to another on March 31, 2012.
Ricardo Gonzalez, an off-duty
Philadelphia police officer, ended up on top of his wife, hissing threats,
promising to kill her and stuff her body into a trash bag, according to court
records.
To calm the couple's four
hysterical children, he yelled: "Stop crying! Daddy is only playing with
Mommy!"
Gonzalez had previously
threatened to kill his wife and their kids if she ever left.
This time, he added a
soul-crushing taunt. Go ahead and call 9-1-1, Gonzalez told his wife.
"The cops are not going to
do anything," he said.
He was wrong. Gonzalez was
arrested two months after the terrifying assault and booted from the force. He
was found guilty of simple assault earlier this summer and faces sentencing on
Sept. 26.
Unfortunately, the scene that
played out in Gonzalez's home wasn't an isolated horror story.
National studies show that 40
percent of police families experience domestic violence, compared with about 10
percent of the general public.
It is a silent epidemic, its
victims often trapped in the shadows of their own homes, lost in a debilitating
mix of fear, confusion, anxiety and doubt.
The Daily News asked the
Philadelphia Police Department for statistics on officer-involved domestic
disputes after being contacted by wives and girlfriends of Philly cops who
claimed they suffered in silence for years - but also still felt too vulnerable
to speak on the record.
The department's data show that
164 officers have had domestic-abuse complaints filed against them in the past
five years.
Of that lot, 11 cops were fired
and criminally charged, and only three have been successfully prosecuted. Most
got back their old jobs.
The numbers suggest that the
problem is small, but domestic-violence experts say the issue is bigger than
what the stats show.
"That [figure] seems
incredibly low to me, although not terribly surprising in that
domestic-violence incidents are vastly underreported," said Debasri Ghosh,
director of education and communications at Women's Way, which advocates for
women and funds projects to help them.
Women battered by men with a
badge are even less likely to report their abuse, Ghosh said.
Some worry that their
complaints will be covered up by their spouse's colleagues, or have ruinous
financial repercussions, like the loss of their spouse's salary and benefits.
Others fear that filing a
complaint could lead their significant other to completely snap, and fulfill
the darkest of their threats.
Rosaura Torres suffered in
silence for years.
The Northeast Philadelphia
woman, 54, was married to a Philadelphia police officer who eventually ascended
into the top ranks of the department. He beat, kicked and choked her for 16
years until one especially brutal beating left her with a detached retina that
left her partially blind.
Throughout, she begged him to
stop and threatened to report him.
"He made it very clear
that no one would listen to me because of his position in the community,"
Torres said. "He said: 'No one's going to listen to you. They'll all say
you're crazy.' And he was right."
She wrote a letter to city and
police officials in 2001 to protest his promotion, citing his history of
domestic abuse. He was promoted anyway.
The couple divorced in 2004.
The Daily News is not naming
her ex-husband, who has since retired in Philadelphia and now works outside the
city, because he was never criminally charged.
Since then, Torres has become
an activist. She chronicled her experience in a 2010 book, Abuse Hidden Behind
the Badge, and has periodically testified before lawmakers as a victim of
police violence.
Torres never travels alone,
fearful that her activism might incite her ex-husband and his supporters.
"It's horrible because you
don't know who to trust, you don't know who's watching you," Torres said.
"He still has power here in Philadelphia."
She added: "There is a
unique injustice that takes place when the abuser is a police officer, because
the people who should help you would rather protect him because of the title he
holds."
Blame the victim
James Carpenter, the chief of
the District Attorney's Family Violence and Sexual Assault Unit, has spent 16
years overseeing domestic-violence cases.
His deputy, John Delaney, has
spent 20 years dealing with them.
Both men said domestic-violence
incidents that involve cops are prosecuted as aggressively as those involving
civilian offenders.
"Years and years ago, you
wouldn't have seen a police officer arrested for hitting his wife,"
Delaney said. "A responding officer would have said to the wife, 'What did
you do to deserve this?' But for the most part, those days are gone."
A retired female Philadelphia
police officer who spent more than two decades on the force said she routinely
saw police-involved domestic cases ignored by her peers and her supervisors.
The issue is a personal one for
the retired cop: She didn't want her name used because her daughter is trying
to extricate herself from a dangerous, violent relationship with an officer.
"The Police Department
does not hold their officers accountable for acts of violence in the home
unless their hand is forced," said the officer, who shared her experiences
with the Daily News.
She recalled responding to a
domestic-violence call in West Philly's 19th District in 1995 and finding a
middle-age woman with bruises around her neck. The woman's husband was a cop.
The retired officer said she
called a supervisor to the scene. Her boss told her to leave. The abuser wasn't
arrested.
"I've seen numerous
officers put on desk duty after being served with a protection-from-abuse
order, but very few of them lost their job or even received any type of
discipline," she said.
"The last I remember,
assaulting someone is a crime. Police officers are not exempt!"
Delaney said it might seem as
if police-involved domestics are making headlines more frequently now because
more women are finding the courage to speak out.
That's not to say, though, that
it's easy for victims to ask for help or get away from toxic situations.
According to court records,
Ricardo Gonzalez was involved in three other domestic incidents before the 2012
arrest.
In one of those instances,
Gonzalez allegedly pulled out a gun and told his wife that he wanted to kill
her and himself - but his wife did not file a complaint.
"It's hard for
domestic-violence victims to leave, especially when they've been told by their
abuser, 'No one's going to believe you,' " said Molly Callahan, the legal
center director for Women Against Abuse.
"When the abuser is a
police officer, they have that credibility built in, which makes it that much
harder for victims to feel like they can leave."
Traumatized by stress
So what is it about the
profession that makes police officers more likely than others to be involved in
domestic violence?
Different theories abound.
The retired female Philly cop
said she came across scores of male and female officers who were traumatized by
the stress of their job - the constant exposure to death and violence and
hostility - but few seemed to consider seeking professional help.
"Some people would
drink," she said. "Some people would go home and beat their wives."
Carpenter said people who have
stressful jobs and a lack of outlets could turn to substance abuse, which could
lead to a higher risk of domestic abuse.
But make no mistake: Having a
stressful job doesn't mean a person has to smack around his spouse.
"With most
domestic-violence cases, you have men with control issues - the guy who is
checking his girlfriend's phone every night, accusing her of stuff and
gradually destroying her self-esteem," Carpenter said.
"Stress and drug and
alcohol abuse doesn't cause that."
Lt. John Stanford, a police
spokesman, said officers can get confidential family, couples or individual
counseling through an employee assistance program.
The department also regularly
trains officers on how to respond to domestic-abuse calls, and that training
"touches on" abuse within an officer's home, he added.
Stanford agreed that the
reported number of police-involved domestics in Philly seems low.
"I personally think
domestic violence is underreported, period, not just in the police profession,"
he said.
The department overhauled the
way officers process domestic calls after the rate of all domestic homicides
spiked in 2009.
Under the guidance of
then-Deputy Commissioner Patricia Giorgio-Fox, the report officers file when
they respond to a domestic - called a 75-48D - was revamped, requiring officers
to ask more than two dozen questions of the victims and input a variety of
details about the personal histories of the abuser and the victim.
The department also formed a
domestic-violence law-enforcement committee that includes Women Against Abuse,
the District Attorney's Office and other agencies to further fine-tune the
collective response to domestic assaults.
Directive 90, the department's
domestic-abuse policy, includes an appendix on how to handle police-involved
domestics: Responding cops are required to call for a supervisor and confiscate
city-issued firearms if a spouse gets a protection-from-abuse order.
"I think the Police
Department does take this issue seriously. They have good policies and
procedures in place," Callahan said.
"The hardest thing for
victims - and rightly so - is feeling everyone from the courts to whomever else
they're talking to is taking them less seriously because the abuser is a police
officer."
Convictions are difficult
Even if an officer is fired for
domestic abuse and arrested, it's not uncommon for the wheels to fall off the
case.
"It can be a very
difficult dynamic to get a conviction because of the way the cycle of abuse
works," Carpenter said.
"If the abuser has a job
supporting the victim, and they have a child together . . . the victim may not
want to pursue it as you move forward," he said. "A woman might feel
that she loves her husband and doesn't want him to go to jail."
Teresa Garvey, an attorney
adviser for AEquitas, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that provides
resources to prosecutors handling domestic-violence cases, said victims are
often afraid of participating in a trial.
"I know some of the
intimidation and fear and pressure is greater on those victims, for a few
different reasons," she said.
"Often, law-enforcement
families have very active social relationships where all the families do things
together, so you know there's going to be pressure from [the abusers'] friends
and their families," she said.
"We also have the fact
that police officers in general are often specifically trained on manipulative
techniques . . . even without laying a hand on the victim, they know how to
intimidate."
Last fall, Lt. Marques Newsome
was fired and arrested after he pinned his girlfriend against a couch in her
parents' house and broke her nose while he was off-duty, according to court
records.
But when Newsome was locked up
a week after the incident, his attorney, Anthony Voci, said Newsome's
girlfriend didn't want to pursue the charges.
Voci noted at the time that the
couple had an infant together.
The charges against Newsome -
aggravated assault, simple assault, stalking and possessing an instrument of
crime - were withdrawn in March after the victim missed a preliminary hearing.
Newsome got his job back.
- Staff writer Morgan Zalot
