Positive action

Around 18 months ago I went, as I do regularly, to reports of a male on female domestic assault. On my arrival the brave bloke, despite being heard in the background on the 999 call to the police saying he would 'have all them pricks', had scarpered. The female had an obvious facial injury and was in pieces. The person she loved, the person she relied on and trusted had beaten her up. He had done it before clearly. Most domestic abuse victims suffer on average 35 incidents of abuse before it is brought to the attention of the police.

I did the usual, put out obs for the male, took pictures of her injuries, got a medical consent form signed, took a statement etc. He wasn't picked up on the day so he was circulated as wanted. He was lifted about four days later and guess what. She retracted. He'd got to her before we'd got to him.

Unfortunately this happens all the time. It has happened since then with this same couple around five or six times. Sadly despite many interventions being put into place she still has him back, he still hits her and one day I believe he will kill her.

Now we as police get crucified when this type of thing happens and rightly so in some cases, complacency, laziness and ineptitude from some cops has left the door wide open for serious domestic crimes to go on occurring. However many cops, myself included, take domestics very seriously and it's gutting when despite the police taking positive action wherever possible, the same cannot be said for the courts and the CPS.

Going back to my earlier example, our latest arrest of the male for abuse led to eight charges of common assault. We'd chased him for a month. We finally got him to court and they give him bail at court. The same day he got bail with conditions not to contact her he did exactly that, through the ever problematic medium of Facebook. He was subsequently arrested and kept for court, what did they do, bailed him again. Today he was seen in town with her, nicked, she's now looking like retracting all her statements and the CPS will no doubt drop the lot.

So please remember next time you see the police criticised over a domestic murder, some of us tried bloody hard to stop it, some didn't!