911 Must Bring Protection, Not Just a Post-Mortem

When Maria Navarro died Sunday night, shot by the estranged husband she was trying to escape, she didn’t die alone. Not just her aunts and a friend died with her, but so did untold numbers of women across the country. They, like Maria, have been shot by their husbands or boyfriends, and, like Maria, are basically left unprotected by a law-enforcement system that turns a deaf ear to the real dangers and fears of women who are the victims of violence by a “loved” one.

“How does this happen?” I heard everyone asking themselves by Tuesday morning. How? It happens because the priorities of the law-enforcement response system are based on a series of fundamental untruths. Law enforcement generally reflects a deeply held societal belief that women are not credible, that they exaggerate the danger of their situation. Such a myth serves very handily to protect the men who commit incest, rape or battering, or who threaten murder.

Nothing in women’s experience supports this myth. In fact, the opposite is true. Women who have been battered or threatened, as Maria Navarro was, are the ones best placed to judge the severity of their own situation. No one knows better than the woman who has lived with him when this man will blow up, or when he will really carry out his threat. Law enforcement would do well to listen to the victim’s assessment of her danger.

Law enforcement’s response also reflects the larger denial of a society that treats the death of Maria Navarro as news, as if such a death at the hands of an estranged husband is unusual. The horrifying truth is, nothing could be more usual.

A few months ago, Time magazine ran the pictures and names of all those Americans who had been killed by handguns in one week. All but three of the women who had not killed themselves had been shot to death by a husband, boyfriend, ex-husband or ex-boyfriend. Almost half of the women died this way. If you extrapolate from the statistics in that article, it is easy to see that this is an everyday occurrence in women’s lives.

Law enforcement’s response to domestic violence also reflects a widely held belief that men have a right to control the behavior of women and children, even if they “must” use violence to do so. This is the only possible explanation for the fact that officers, their supervisors and prosecutors and judges more often than not treat the crime of domestic violence less seriously as than they treat any other crime.

A corollary to this myth is one that teaches that the women themselves are responsible for causing the violence against them. No crime is taken seriously if the victim may have brought it on. Of course, it is only when the crime has been against a woman, as in rape or domestic violence, that you hear such a statement.

Perhaps the greatest problem typified by Maria Navarro’s death is the bankruptcy of law enforcement’s commitment to protecting female victims of violence. This is especially true in communities east of La Cienega Boulevard, where minority populations are concentrated.

Although Maria Navarro touchingly believed, when she naively dialed 911, that the sheriff’s deputies were there to “protect and serve” her, the truth is that law enforcement has almost entirely given up on protection and has basically opted only to punish. “More prisons!” cries the Legislature, and “More prisons!” the governor echoes. Wait until somebody kills somebody, then show up and arrest. This is not the answer. Law-enforcement resources could be more effectively used to prevent crime.

“What can we do?” the 911 dispatcher said to Maria Navarro. Well, for one thing, law enforcement can stop being so fundamentally dishonest about its inability to protect. When Maria called 911, she was told, “We can’t have a unit sit there and wait and see if he comes over.” No one says that when politicians, candidates and celebrities need protection after threats. Police protect, but they select when they protect.

Law-enforcement officers must make fundamental changes in the way they see their duty to the public. It is simply bad policy to refuse to respond until a crime is actually in progress. By that time, women are unable to protect themselves. But they could be protected if law enforcement took a victim’s assessment of the potential danger seriously. They could be protected if society would awaken from its unsupported denial of the prevalence of the violence of husbands and boyfriends against women.

That may lead us to the answer to the question posed by the 911 dispatcher to Maria Navarro: “What can we do?” Some would say that we simply need more officers. But more officers is an answer only if they are committed to protecting and not just showing up too late and punishing.

More training? Definitely. Officers will tell you that once they understand the reality of violence against women, they can never go back to their own denial or, as so often happens, to their identification with the husband. That seems natural to so many of them. But that training must also include the need for a fundamental change in response policy, one that truly protects. Law enforcement has to face the truth before the next Maria Navarro and countless other women die of its myths.