Article: S.F. getting it right on domestic violence

For Clara Tempongko, her daughter is frozen in time. She's still the vibrant 28-year-old who gathered their big family together for birthday parties, Christmas festivities or any reason to celebrate.

Twelve years after the brutal stabbing of Claire Joyce Tempongko by her ex-boyfriend, the family doesn't celebrate much anymore. But her mother has maintained a nightly ritual that centers around the urn with her daughter's ashes that she keeps in her bedroom.

"Every night before I go to sleep, I say, 'Oh my God, I wish my daughter was still here and with her children,' " said Clara Tempongko, a 66-year-old Richmond District resident and in-home caregiver for elderly people. "My family will never be the same."

But thankfully for other San Francisco women suffering violence at the hands of their boyfriends, husbands or partners, law enforcement's response will never be the same either.

As Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi's trial on three misdemeanor counts related to domestic violence is set to begin Friday, many of his supporters have wondered why the case has wound up in court at all. He allegedly grabbed his wife's arm hard enough to leave a bruise and did so in front of their 2-year-old son.

But domestic violence activists say what has played out in the Mirkarimi case since the alleged argument with his wife on New Year's Eve is exactly what's supposed to happen. They say the city is finally handling domestic violence cases appropriately 12 years after it did just about everything wrong in the Tempongko case.

Back then, the city averaged 10 to 12 domestic violence homicides annually. Tempongko's case prompted reforms across all branches of law enforcement - including the way 911 dispatchers handle calls, how police officers respond to them, and how the district attorney handles cases. Advocates credit the changes with a plunge in domestic violence homicides, now averaging one or two a year.

San Francisco is now a national model in handling domestic violence cases, though advocates add that more work - including launching a long-delayed computer system to allow law enforcement agencies to easily share data - needs to be done.

"We see a city that's made tremendous progress ... because of some really committed folks and the city's willingness to look at this in the face of that horrific crime," said Kathy Black, executive director of La Casa de las Madres, a shelter for abused women.

A flawed system

Tempongko was killed in front of her 10-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter in her Richmond District apartment by her ex-boyfriend, Tari Ramirez. "Mommy, Mommy!" a neighbor reported hearing a child scream. "Help, help. My mom, she's been stabbed."

The first police officer on scene was so disturbed by the gruesome sight - a woman slumped in a chair, covered in blood and barely breathing - that his hands shook too violently to take notes.

The ghastly murder shook the city itself. For a year and a half, Tempongko had called 911 to report violence by Ramirez. She had cooperated with police and obtained protective orders.

But a report conducted by the city attorney's office at the request of the city's Commission on the Status of Women after the murder found that just about every department responsible for keeping Tempongko safe had failed miserably.

The district attorney, police and probation departments didn't communicate with each other. The district attorney never requested state prison for Ramirez and repeatedly dismissed or pleaded out charges. The probation department left Ramirez unsupervised for four months after his probation officer retired.

"A week after the murder, probation said, 'We haven't heard from this guy in a while. We should have him come in,' " recalled Emily Murase, director of the Department on the Status of Women. "They didn't even realize he was wanted for murder!"

Tempongko's family sued the city and received a $500,000 settlement. Ramirez fled to Mexico and was extradited and convicted of second-degree murder in 2008. A state appeals court last year overturned the conviction, saying the judge misled jurors about the legal standard for a lesser verdict of manslaughter. The matter is now before the state Supreme Court, and Ramirez remains in prison.

The Tempongko case was eerily reminiscent of the 1990 shooting death of Veena Charan by her estranged husband. She, too, had reported his violence to the police - but he killed her in front of their child on a crowded San Francisco schoolyard.

That murder, after which Charan's husband committed suicide, also led to a report that recommended 106 changes in city domestic violence policy. Some advocates say Tempongko wouldn't have been killed if those recommendations had been fully implemented.

Lifesaving changes

This time around, the work seems to have had more staying power. It led to the creation of the Justice and Courage Oversight Panel, which still meets monthly at City Hall.

Andrea Shorter, a political consultant who chairs the panel, said she knows domestic violence advocates are still seen by some as "angry women" and "ultra-zealous feminists," and said she's been bothered by those who've questioned whether the Mirkarimi incident was really domestic violence.

"There are always going to be some knuckleheads out there who don't get it, but our job is to make sure more people get it," she said. "When it's your daughter, your sister, your mother, your brother or cousin, then we can talk."

She said the panel's work has not only kept an untold number of women - and the smaller number of men who are victims of domestic violence - safe, but also serves to protect the city against liability in mishandled cases like Tempongko's.

Better communication

Much of the panel's work has centered around the fact that 70 percent of victims of domestic violence homicides in the early 2000s in San Francisco were immigrant women who spoke little English.

The city contracted with a company that provides telephone interpretation in multiple languages to 911 dispatchers, police officers and others so they can help a woman who doesn't speak English. Police carry cards with the access number for the telephone interpretation and are taught simple phrases in Chinese and Spanish that could come into play in domestic violence situations.

Thanks to a grant from Blue Shield, 435 law enforcement members have been trained in handling domestic violence cases in a sensitive way. For example, 911 dispatchers shouldn't ask a woman calling to report domestic violence whether she wants an ambulance because she'll often refuse.

"If you don't want that kind of attention in the neighborhood, you might say no even though you might be very hurt," Murase said. "An alternative way to ask the question is, 'Are you hurt? I'm sending help.' "

Other commonsense changes include now requiring sheriff's deputies serving restraining orders to note a subject's response, whether they're remorseful, threatening or deny the charges.

The Police Department has created new codes for domestic violence and stalking crimes, which often used to be listed under disturbing the peace or other tangential crimes. Several law enforcement agencies have staff dedicated to domestic violence cases.

Murase said one of the biggest changes has been departments simply talking to each other.

"We had police officers on the force for 20 years saying, 'I've never met a probation officer or a 911 dispatcher,' " Murase said.

But what could be one of the best tools for departments to communicate is still not functioning, despite years of promises. A computer system called the Justice Tracking Information System could link departments and eliminate the old-fashioned paper files.

Susan Giffin, the Police Department's chief information officer, said the department has been up and running since October and now police reports are housed in a computerized data system. They're easily accessible to any police officer and are searchable to allow officers to see whether a perpetrator had prior complaints against him.

"We had this unbelievably difficult, arcane manual process," she said. "Now, the minute the final sentence is written on the police report and the officer presses enter, all cops on the beat have access to it."

She said the records won't be accessible to other city agencies until the city administrator implements several security requirements, including the ability to track who views the data.

Naomi Kelly, the new city administrator, said she hopes to launch the system within a few months.

The city's efforts certainly haven't stopped domestic violence, but rather are designed to catch cases much earlier. There are 4,000 cases reported to police annually in San Francisco, and advocates say only a tenth of cases are reported.

"Any one of those could become a homicide," Murase said.

Clara Tempongko has become a domestic violence activist herself, speaking out at city meetings to keep alive her daughter's memory and disastrous fate. She believes the city has made great strides.

"Everything has improved," she said.

The same can be said for her grandchildren who witnessed their mother's death. The boy, who lived with his biological father after his mother's death, is 21. He now has an apartment in the Sunset, a girlfriend and a job as a manager at the Metreon's movie theater. The girl, who has lived with her grandmother since her mom's death, is 17 and set to graduate from Burton High in May. She plans to go to college to become a psychologist.

"They remember everything, and the pain won't go away," Clara Tempongko said. "But we're moving on."