Saturday December 12, 2009
By: Bill Vidonic
Beaver County Times
By all accounts, Penn Hills police officer Michael Crawshaw did exactly what he was supposed to do when responding to a report of a domestic dispute at a borough residence on Dec. 6.
He parked a couple of doors from where there was a report of shots fired, and waited for backup.
Along a darkened residential street, Crawshaw would die in a hail of bullets as he sat in his police car.
Police would later learn that the call Crawshaw was responding to was not a domestic dispute, but instead a dispute over money. Crawshaw did not know that, though, and followed the department’s protocol in keeping back until he had a fellow officer to help him.
Several Beaver County law enforcement officers said this week that domestic disputes are the worst calls to respond to, fights involving husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, or family members.
Tempers are hot. Many times, the parties involved are drunk or under the influence of drugs. The fighting parties quickly turn on police.
“The most powerful intoxicant is hate,” Beaver County District Attorney Anthony Berosh said Thursday.
“Those calls can go from being real calm to getting out of hand so fast,” Aliquippa Police Chief Ralph Pallante said Friday.
In the last couple of decades, the only domestic dispute that led to the death of a police officer in Beaver County was the 1992 shooting of off-duty Rochester officer Mike Love in a Rochester Township bar.
Love, 28, was dancing with Brenda Jo Stevens, 45, in Armando’s Lounge, and Stevens’ estranged husband, Andre Stevens, came into the bar and shot and killed his wife and Love. Police said Love and Brenda Jo Stevens didn’t know each other before they were dancing in the bar. Andre Stevens was sentenced to death for the slayings, but that sentence has not yet been carried out.
In April, three Pittsburgh police officers were shot to death while responding to a call on a fight between mother and son, Margaret and Richard Poplawski. According to police, the pair had fought because Richard Poplawski’s dog had urinated inside the house, and Margaret Poplawski then threatened to kick her son out of the house.
In that case, Pittsburgh police said that officers were at a deadly disadvantage as they responded because they were not told that Richard Poplawski had weapons inside the home.
In Beaver County, emergency services dispatchers, as they are taking information from a 911 call, ask the caller whether there are weapons involved in a domestic incident.
Dispatchers also ask whether there are any weapons accessible in the area of the fight, so that police know whether, from the time the call is dispatched to the time they arrive, there’s a possibility that someone could grab a weapon.
New Sewickley Township Police Chief Ron Leindecker said that his officers always respond with the assumption that there could be weapons involved.
“We treat it as if we don’t know,” Leindecker said. “We’re going home at the end of the shift.”
In the last 10 years, according to Times files, of 59 murders in Beaver County, 25 were directly related to domestic violence. Some were murder-suicide cases.
Several local police departments said there’s no written policy on how to deal with a domestic call, instead telling officers to rely on common sense. That means that an officer won’t go into a home or fight scene alone, waiting for at least one other officer to respond as backup.
Beaver County Sheriff’s Department Capt. Jay Alstadt said that once officers have arrived, the first task is to separate the warring parties and get information from them separately to determine whether any criminal charges are warranted.
“There is no way you can actually tell someone through policy how to handle a domestic situation,” Alstadt said. “You can offer training and you learn from experience.”
For Industry Police Chief Garold Miller, he said that last week he did exactly what he instructed his officers not to do: He responded to a call of a domestic dispute by himself.
Miller said he was responding to a call of a fight between a mother and daughter, and even as he continued to drive toward the scene was updated by dispatchers that the fight was “still going pretty good.”
“The mentality is that it was involving two women, but you shouldn’t do that today,” Miller said. “I’ve always told my guys don’t go on a domestic by yourself. It’s too crazy today.”
Alstadt said that his department will read protection-from-abuse orders before they go to serve them to determine whether they’re serving a person who has caused problems in the past. Based on that information, they’ll determine how many deputies will help serve the document.
Police said that once they respond, they can quickly become the target of turbulent emotions.
“Even though the two parties are fighting and they’re at odds,” Pallante said, “when you walk in, it turns around and they team up on you.”
Berosh said that many times, an outsider will call to report a fight between their neighbors or outsiders. When police arrive, they’re treated as if they’re butting into someone’s private business instead of seen as trying to restore peace.
“A lot of times, aggression between the two people will turn on law enforcement that’s in front of them,” Alstadt said. “All that pent-up passion and aggression toward each other is now directed at the officer at the scene.”
Alstadt said he’s seen a woman who obviously has been beaten by a man attack police as they took the man into custody.
“You have to be very, very careful and on your guard the entire time you’re there,” Alstadt said.
And Berosh said that there’s an additional frustration for officers: They know that many times, those involved in a domestic dispute refuse to press charges, so any problems they encounter in the initial incident will be for nothing.
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