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among its original members. When the recession hit two years later, the depart- ment lost its federal funding, but the tough-on-domestic-abuse legacy had taken root.
“Domestic violence touches so many di erent aspects of our community,” Nasset said. “It wasn’t a matter of if we could, it was how we were going to con- tinue to dedicate a specialist to domestic violence. It wasn’t an option to let it go.”
Nasset downsized, reining in the DVAT’s focus from the valley to the Kalis- pell city limits.
Thanks to that commitment, “the Kalispell Police Department is (now) run- ning exemplary services for (domestic) violence, even on a national scale,” Shaw said. “KPD (has) really established a cul- ture of caring about domestic violence.”
Now a decade old, the group includes Wilson and Meyer, as well as Assistant Attorney General Emily von Jentzen. The three members meet weekly to dis- cuss cases, build the stronger ones for prosecution, and craft tailored plans to help local survivors.
“We want to do, at the very least, what the law asks,” Nasset said. “Anything above and beyond that we can do to curb domestic violence, we will. We take this very seriously... More than reactive, we want to be proactive, and stop it before it gets rolling.”
To be proactive, Wilson and his o cers use the power and control wheel. Its the- ory is central to his mindset – when dis- cussing PFMA, Wilson interchangeably
refers to domestic abuse relationships as “power and control relationships.”
“It’s so important to look at the power and control wheel, look at the little things, when you talk to [the couple],” Wilson said. “When you respond to a scene as a police o cer, even if there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of domestic violence, when you start hearing things like, ‘He won’t let me have a cell phone,’ ‘I have to ask him for money,’ ‘He’s constantly talking about taking away my kids,’ ‘He doesn’t allow me to go out with friends,’ that raises red ags. And I start really looking into those cases.”
Wilson says he knows every name that crosses his desk, and he keeps track of homes the police are called to repeat- edly, even if there’s never an arrest. Look- ing for patterns, he tries to step in earlier rather than later.
“When we see power and control, all stops come out,” he said. “Sometimes, I’ll get the report and there’s no proba- ble cause to make an arrest, but the case scares me, it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.”
Often, he’ll just call the survivor himself simply to let them know he’s on their side. “The women that are caught up in this
are not going to call,” Wilson said.
He takes that initiative, telling them, “‘If it starts to build, if it goes from the tension phase to the exploding phase, hey, my door is always open, give me a call. We’ll gure something out and get
you out of that situation.’”
Aside from pursuing justice through
the legal system, or if a survivor needs immediate help to get out of danger, they can nd solace and refuge at the Abbie Shelter. Founded in 1976, the shelter is named after Abigail Fredericks, a Flat- head activist and Quaker who started a 24-hour hotline with a federal grant.
“Most survivors at the time weren’t telling anyone,” Shaw said. “They were going to their graves without ever speak- ing of the trauma that had happened to them.”
As open discourse about domestiv violence grew, so did the hotline and over time received more federal funding. In 1994, the shelter opened in a home donated by activists who had passed on. Now with ve bedrooms, the shelter o ers a place for survivors and their chil- dren to regain independence.
“They’re so brave and resilient and have endured for so [long],” Shaw said. “Recovery from domestic violence is so hard. You have the skillset that has allowed you to survive a horri c environ- ment, but it doesn’t t in the rest of the world. Shelters can’t just be a safe build- ing. That’s why we call them survivors – Athey’re surviving it daily.”
fter keeping a DVAT team funded for a decade, Kalispell’s police chief recognizes that while “all
[local departments] try to stick to the law,
going above and beyond is dependent on caseload, availability, and resources.”
For smaller local departments like White sh and Columbia Falls, tight budgets and small sta can pose real limitations.
“A big reason is manpower, what you have available,” Assistant White sh Police Chief Mike Ferda said. “I’d hate to say we can’t help people with their prob- lems because it’s a numbers game. But it does come into play.”
What the other departments also lack is a holistic understanding of violence in intimate relationships, according to Meyer. In Kalispell, that insight – not an abundance of resources – lends itself to a unique sense of urgency regarding domestic abuse cases.
Columbia Falls Police Chief Dave Perry said his department is strictly con- cerned about bodily harm and apprehen- sion of bodily harm, as is outlined in the PFMA statute.
“We deal with the physical violence,” he said. “Domestic violence is when there’s been a physical altercation. Per- sonally, I think our approach and the law is adequate ... I don’t know if there’s ways of improving it.”
Both the Columbia Falls and White- sh departments’ primary goal regarding domestic violence is to enforce the letter of the law.
As Ferda said, “KPD is probably dealing with the whole part of the matter, not just the consequences. And Columbia Falls is probably dealing with just the aftermath, the criminal justice side of it. We’re prob- ably a lot more like Columbia Falls.”
Some White sh police o cers do receive additional domestic violence train- ing, and Ferda explained that though he doesn’t want o cers “to get too far from what their responsibilities are, we want them informed, we want them to care and to be able to see the subtle hints out there.”
“We do our best to do the right thing,” agreed Flathead County Sheri Chuck Curry. “I think the law has changed sig- ni cantly in the last 20 years and we are much tougher than we used to be ... [but] the law doesn’t do preventative.”
Ultimately, Ferda said, “the causes of domestic violence have been the same rooted problems in society long before I was ever a police o cer. I think how we deal with it changes with how much soci- ety wants to deal with causes instead of just e ects.”
The Kalispell community hasn’t been more outspoken than any other in demanding domestic violence safeguards, but KPD leadership displays a noticeable drive to become a leader in addressing this age-old form of lethal violence.
“I don’t think [society wants] to deal with it,” Wilson said. “They want to look at it, condemn it, condemn him, ‘That’s an awful thing, he never should have done that,’ and then they want to move on. They don’t want to actually look at the root causes and how ugly domestic vio- lence in our country really truly is.”
clare@ atheadbeacon.com
APRIL 6, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
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ABOVE Kalispell Chief of Police Roger Nasset. BEACON FILE PHOTO