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EDINBURG — Farah Lynn Villalobos picked up items from her purse that had been violently strewn across the street.
As an Hidalgo County sheriff’s deputy drove by her home in Weslaco, he paused.
“Have you heard, have you seen, or do you have any knowledge of a domestic dispute going on around here?” the officer asked the 28-year-old woman.
“No,” she replied.
The deputy, having received a very vague description of the home and the parties involved, asked her the same question at least two more times before she became irate and, in not so many words, asked him to leave, Sheriff Lupe Treviño said.
That was the last time anyone saw her conscious.
Investigators believe Villalobos’ soon-to-be husband and his brother beat her to death Feb. 19, just hours after she refused help from authorities.
Both men are awaiting trial after deputies filed murder charges against them.
Villalobos is one of three victims killed as a result of domestic abuse in Hidalgo County this year, according to figures from the Sheriff’s Office. Four others were killed in 2010, and four more died the previous year.
“That was really a heart-breaking case,” Treviño said about Villalobos. “That case had a lot to do with me developing this program.”
The sheriff is spearheading an effort to curb homicides tied to domestic abuse. The program is the first of its kind in Texas, he said.
Fifteen of Treviño’s recently graduated deputies underwent a 32-hour training course to become domestic abuse intervention specialists two weeks ago, and another 15 will do so in mid-August. Training staff at the sheriff’s academy tailored the course to fit the sheriff’s specifications.
Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education — the state agency that issues peace officer licenses — approved the pilot program, Treviño said.
The intense, three-day course included several keynote speakers and a thorough review of the Texas Family Code, which outlines what constitutes a criminal offense among family members.
Larger police departments, such as Houston or Dallas, have domestic abuse investigative units, but those are detective units that follow up a day or two later, Treviño said. They don’t make the initial response, like a deputy who is on patrol would.
“What’s different about ours is that we’re on the street to help intervene and channel victims and suspects” to needed services, he said. “That way you don’t have to wait all day or all night to talk to a detective.”
The specialists will routinely patrol a certain area of the county, where they will respond and follow up on domestic disturbances — making them experts in their specific areas, Treviño said.
IN CLASS
The FBI estimates a woman is abused every 12 seconds, Senior Deputy Fred Perez told his students.
“Is it an achievable goal to decrease domestic abuse cases?” the instructor asked. “Can we change behaviors and attitudes? As law enforcement, what are the real options we have?
“Those are some of the questions we’re going to answer in this course.”
And to help him do that, several key players involved in such cases were invited, including a psychiatrist, an assistant district attorney, a spokesperson from a women’s advocacy nonprofit, an investigator and the county’s victim’s liaison.
Each spoke about his or her role and how deputies affect the work they do. Hidalgo County Assistant District Attorney Catherine Howard reiterated the importance of documentation.
“If it wasn’t written down, it didn’t happen,” she said.
That’s the general attitude of the court system during prosecution. Deputies should especially note excited utterances, or things people say without being prompted during an emotional situation, Howard said.
Officers also learned about the many services available to both victims and offenders, including therapy, help with relocation costs and information about how to obtain an emergency protective order. They practiced several techniques to use when interviewing the victim, offender and children, who many times serve as witnesses.
“Do you need parental permission to interview children?” Perez asked. “No, you don’t. Not when they’re witnesses.”
Emotions often are intense and mixed as the victim tries to balance fear, need and love, experts said. This can affect their responses when being questioned by authorities. Offenders usually try to intimidate the victim or whitewash the situation, Perez said. So deputies should interview both parties separately to prevent this.
Perez displayed graphic images, videos and emergency 9-1-1 calls between breaks to remind deputies of the suffering families can go through. One recording featured the voice of a young boy who was pleading for police as his father beat his mother and a younger sibling.
“He’s got the baby,” the crying boy shrieked into the phone. “Please hurry.”
One last scream was heard before the call ended abruptly.
OUT ON PATROL
Deputy Albert Velasquez passed the exit exam last week and is now a specialist. A Monitor reporter rode with him Thursday and Friday nights as he patrolled West-3, an area near Alton.
Velasquez’s shift began at 11 p.m. Thursday, and by 1 a.m. Friday, he had responded to several calls, including a runaway teen who had returned, a domestic disturbance and an attempted robbery.
A 15-year-old girl called the Sheriff’s Office because her intoxicated father allegedly hit her disabled mother and pushed and pulled the girl’s hair before taking the woman’s truck, a dispatcher said.
Velasquez met the girl outside her home in rural Hidalgo County, where the girl’s 18-year-old brother arrived minutes later as the teen gave Velasquez a statement.
“Don’t tell them anything,” the visibly upset man said to her.
At that point, Velasquez and a senior officer also present separated the siblings — as was taught in the course. The brother claimed his father wouldn’t do anything like that, yet his mother had just been admitted to an area hospital, the deputy learned.
Velasquez took the statement from both of them and followed up with the victim that same night.
The woman, who suffers from epilepsy, had a sling on her arm when Velasquez arrived at the hospital. She smelled of alcohol and was more upset about misplacing her purse than the disturbance itself, he said. Deputies did not arrest the man that night because he could not be found.
The following day, Velasquez responded to yet another domestic disturbance call. This time, the family of a 29-year-old woman called police after she and her baby left in a vehicle with the woman’s upset husband.
Her family worried the husband, 22, would hurt them because he was previously convicted of attempted murder. A juvenile at the time, he was sentenced to 10 years probation, they said.
The couple lives with the husband’s mother, and Velasquez went to her home. He found both parties unharmed there and again spoke to them individually.
The woman told Velasquez she was afraid of dealing with law enforcement because she was an illegal immigrant. She feared deportation. Velasquez, however, gave her contact information to several agencies and nonprofits that could help her.
“I’ll think about it,” she said in Spanish. “We’re moving into a new place soon, so maybe that will help him straighten up.”
Velasquez did not arrest the man because he had not committed a crime.
The deputy responded to a total of seven domestic abuse cases during the course of the two days, Treviño said.
TRACKING AND TWEAKING
There’s no way to know whether the new training would have saved Villalobos, Treviño said.
“She might have refused the help,” he said. “But at least we are trying to go beyond our regular duties to hopefully save some lives and stop further abuse.”
Recidivism is very high among domestic abuse cases, he added.
“If we can put a stop to that or at least slow it down, we would be very successful in preventing aggravated assaults and domestic abuse-related homicides — if we get in early enough to intervene,” Treviño said.
The specialists will be required to keep a close track of the number of victims, arrests, referrals and other important categories to measure whether the program is successful, he added. Deputies will compile statistics to be reported each month and use that information to tweak the program.
If it proves to be successful, which the sheriff believes it will, Treviño plans to open the course to any South Texas law enforcement agency interested in taking it — free of cost.
“I just wished I’d done this earlier,” he said.
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Naxiely Lopez covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. She can be reached at (956) 683-4434.
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