Travel back with me to 1994 when the lurid O.J. Simpson case put domestic violence on the front page of every newspaper, when Peggy Kerns, Tom Norton, Mike Feeley and Diana DeGette dominated the news from the Colorado statehouse, and when getting tough on spouse abusers was America’s trendy top priority.
The Colorado legislature passed five landmark bills that session. When Gov. Roy Romer signed them into law, he said they required mandatory arrests in domestic-violence complaints and violations of restraining orders and, for the first time, defined domestic violence under the criminal statutes.
“Our intention clearly was to reduce the discretion of police officers and to make a restraining order more than just a piece of paper,” Feeley said. Under state law, he said, “once an officer has reached the conclusion that probable cause exists, his discretion is really not that great.”
The law was supposed to make arrest mandatory.
OK, now fast-forward to June 22, 1999. At around 5 p.m., in defiance of the stipulations of a restraining order, Simon Gonzales abducted his three daughters from their mother’s yard. Jessica Gonzales reported the incident to Castle Rock police around 7:30, showed them the restraining order and expressed concern for her girls’ safety. The police told her to call back if they weren’t home by 10.
At 8:30, she reached Simon on his cellphone and reported to police that he had the children at Six Flags Elitch Gardens. They could find them there, she said. The police told her to chill out and wait till 10.
At 10:10 p.m., she reported that the kids weren’t home. The police told her to wait till midnight. She called again at 12:10. They ignored her. At 12:50 a.m., she went to the police station to file a report. The officer filed it and went to dinner.
At 3:20 a.m., the situation finally got the Police Department’s attention when Simon Gonzales walked into the station and opened fire on the cops.
After officers shot and killed him, they found the bullet-ridden bodies of the three girls inside the cab of his truck.
Now we come to June 27, 2005, when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia outlined the decision in Town of Castle Rock, Colo. vs. Jessica Gonzales. Gonzales was seeking damages from the Castle Rock police for failing to enforce the restraining order. Her claims were denied.
“We do not believe that these provisions of Colorado law truly made enforcement of restraining orders mandatory,” Scalia wrote. “… A true mandate of police action would require some stronger indication from the Colorado Legislature than ‘shall use every reasonable means to enforce a restraining order.”‘
In other words, never mind the intent of the Colorado legislature and the unambiguous language – “YOU SHALL ARREST … (when) THE RESTRAINED PERSON HAS VIOLATED OR ATTEMPTED TO VIOLATE ANY PROVISION OF THIS ORDER” – the law has no teeth.
If a police officer believes dinner takes priority over enforcing a restraining order, the Supreme Court has his back.
State Rep. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, wants to change that.
“We’ve got to come back with a law that says more clearly what we thought we were doing in the first place,” she said. “We’ve got to get somebody’s feet on the pavement immediately to at least assess what next step is required.”
Feeley agreed. “I absolutely think the law needs revisiting,” he said.
Carroll said the opinion points out the failures in the system. “We have to make it very, very clear to law enforcement that we’re not talking about (responding) if you feel like it.”
Carroll agrees with the court’s dissenting opinion.
“In my opinion, it’s clear … that a nonresponse truly never was an option under the law as written,” she said.
It doesn’t matter. The majority on the court didn’t see it that way.
So in memory of the murdered Gonzales girls, the legislature needs to close any loophole that allows police to trivialize a victim’s desperate pleas for help.
This time for good.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
