Is it true that the police arrest the man if he calls them on an abusive wife/girlfriend in the US?

a-man-from-earth · 2021-08-21T23:26:07+00:00

Not everywhere, but yeah. Read up on the Duluth Model.

problem_redditor · 2021-08-22T01:24:34+00:00

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233694571_In_Dubious_Battle_The_Politics_of_Mandatory_Arrest_and_Dominant_Aggressor_Laws

California is one of several states that defines the dominant aggressor not as the first aggressor but rather the most “significant,” a sharp deviation from accepted police practice in responding to other crimes. As specified under state law and found in the domestic violence section of the Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) manual, here are the factors taken into account when determining the predominant aggressor.

Age, weight, and height of the parties;
Criminal history;
Domestic violence history, including convictions and probation;
Strength, special skills (e.g., martial arts, boxing);
Use of weapons;
Offensive and defensive injuries;
Seriousness of injuries;
Use of alcohol and drugs;
Who called 911;
Who is in fear;
Presence of behaviors of power and control in the relationship;
Detail of statement;
Demeanor of the parties; and
Existence of corroborating evidence (California Commission on POST, 2010, pp. 3–5, 3–6)

None of these criteria are openly anti-male, but there are some bits that are prejudicial to men as a result of the criteria that was selected in determining the predominant aggressor.

"Again, many of these factors are vague, not easily interpreted and of dubious value. “Age, weight, and height of the parties,” and martial arts training are only relevant if the individual actually uses these advantages in an aggressive way. Men are usually bigger and stronger than women are, but most men do not abuse their partners, and there is no correlation in the general population between a person’s size and strength and the extent to which they abuse intimate partners, including among same-sex couples (Renzetti, 1992). When men are assaulted, they often refrain from striking back, both out of fear of being arrested and the code of chivalry. ... A man who is larger and stronger than his partner may have the potential of causing greater physical damage, but this factor is irrelevant unless he actually uses this to his advantage, just as the smaller woman has the potential to obtain a gun and kill him. The reader will notice that for weapons, officers are asked to consider their use, but not so with size and strength. In this respect, there is reason to suspect that the choice of criteria may be prejudicial to men (Sacks, 2010)."

There is no reason why these policies make sense. Not a single one. I've seen it argued before by incredibly disingenuous and ideologically possessed feminists that by removing the more physically strong partner from the household with more ability to cause damage during a conflict, the policies protect people. But there is no reason why this would protect people more than any other form of arrest would. If any or both of the parties are removed from the household, by being apart, both the physically weaker partner and the physically strong partner are protected from each other. There is no reason why arresting the physically weaker partner (in cases where the physically weaker partner is the main instigator) or arresting both partners (in cases where both are perpetrating violence) would confer any less protection than arresting only the physically stronger partner.

And how police are trained to identify the predominant aggressor is blatantly gender-biased.

In two official police training manuals, including the POST manual cited earlier (California Commission on POST, 2010):

"The POST manual contains sections that define domestic violence that discuss its impact on victims and instruct officers in a detailed manner on response and arrest procedures and the protection of victims. Brief case scenarios are presented for the purpose of illustration and to facilitate learning. ... The manual generously offers 50 such examples, in which one party abuses or otherwise acts aggressively toward the other. ... Of the 50 examples, not a single one depicts unilateral abuse by a female upon a male (see Table 1). ... The examples send out a clear message to law enforcement in California, the largest state with more than 10% of the U.S. population: Officers should concern themselves only with male-perpetrated violence."

"The Maine training program, Identifying Predominant Aggressors in Domestic Violence Cases (Train-the-Trainer), is a 2-to 4-hour presentation consisting of lectures, video scenarios, and group discussions from the Maine Criminal Justice Academy, the organization that conducts trainings for all law enforcement and corrections agencies in the state of Maine (Rogers & Faragher-Houghton, 2008, p. 3). More so than the POST training, the Maine curriculum focuses right from the start, in its definition of domestic violence, on the exclusive needs of female victims. Following an exposition on the evolution of the criminal justice response, trainees are presented eight examples (one involving a public disturbance; the others depicting a domestic violence incident between a man and a woman) and asked to decide which party is the predominant aggressor based on the state’s legal criteria (similar to California’s), and who to arrest. Trainees are then informed that in seven of those cases, it is the man who should be arrested. In the other case, there is no specific recommendation to arrest either the man or the woman, but the clear implication is that the man is the dominant aggressor."

And...

"The gender bias found in both the California and Maine trainings is blatant, indeed. However, considering the process by which dominant aggressor laws were put on the books, one should hardly be surprised. Laws protecting victims from domestic abuse were enacted not by abused men or men’s rights groups or disinterested bureaucrats, but through the efforts of battered women’s advocates, some of whom had previously been victimized in their own lives, and by feminists concerned broadly with the oppression of women (Mills, 2003). It was feminists who fought for the creation of dominant aggressor guidelines, and they did so explicitly to stem the rising tide of female arrests, on the grounds that domestic violence is a gendered problem. This view, based on a feminist analysis of patriarchy and sometimes referred to as the gender paradigm (Dutton & Corvo, 2007; Dutton & Nicholls, 2005), has had a profound influence on policy and intervention."

"The existence of training bias and political activism only suggest—and do not prove—that police officers actually carry out arrests in a gender-biased manner, and clearly much more research is needed. However, there is evidence elsewhere in the criminal justice response to domestic violence of a clear political agenda, as evidenced by the tendency of police to dually arrest significantly more often when the male is the victim, compared to the female (Hirschel & Buzawa, 2009); the preferential granting of restraining orders to women relative to men in response to similar complaints (Muller, Desmarais, & Hamel, 2009); the failure of law enforcement to adequately inform male victims regarding community resources (Buzawa & Hotaling, 2006); and the proliferation of intervention programs based on a patriarchal theory (Dobash & Dobash, 1979; Pence & Paymar, 1993). In addition, telling is the official domestic violence training offered by the U.S. Victims of Crime office, whose training manual gives 11 examples of physical domestic violence and various power and control tactics. Of these 11 examples, 8 involve male-on-female battering, 2 involve female-on-female lesbian abuse, and 1 involves a male perpetrator and a victim whose gender is not specified (Office of Justice Programs, 2010). Once again, trainers are not able to imagine any scenario whatsoever in which the perpetrator is a woman and her victim is a man."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3175099/

Given this level of bias in law and policy and the training materials, it is no wonder that men report "being ridiculed by the police or being incorrectly arrested as the primary aggressor".

airfox3522 · 2021-08-22T03:49:18+00:00

This one time when I was still living with my mom in Arlington Heights, Illinois, My mom wanted me to change the wallpaper (onimusha) on my desktop. When I refused, she threaten to call the police on me and tell them I hit her. She even said " I am a woman, who do you think they will believe when they arrived?!". This is just one of my many examples of her abuse against me. To this day, I am still suffering the trauma she has done on me. I don't think I can give a good eulogy about her during her funeral.

Rockbottom503 · 2021-08-21T23:43:37+00:00

I remember seeing it was required to remove the male from the household under VAWA laws when they were first introduced. I'm not sure if they were ever changed.

hendrixski · 2021-08-22T01:16:42+00:00

Laws aside, the stereotypes (that shape police perceptions of what happened on the scene) is that men are abusive and women are victims. So lots of police show up with this bias already in their heads. Leading to male victims of abuse being more likely to be arrested than their abuser.

Colonel_Khazlik · 2021-08-21T23:20:37+00:00

I know it's the case in the UK, but again, anecdotal.

SpicyMarshmellow · 2021-08-25T15:48:03+00:00

Anecdotal, I know, but... There was a guy in my social circle about 20 years ago who I didn't know very well who this happened to. Indiana. This is the story I heard second hand. So disclaimer that it may not be 100% true.

He and his girlfriend had an argument, and she started losing her shit. Screaming, throwing & breaking things, and posing a danger to herself. He was not aggressive, but did grab her wrists while trying to calm her down and mitigate the destruction. Neighbors heard the screaming and called the cops. Police showed up, found bruises on her wrists, and arrested him, even after the girlfriend snapped out of it, explained to them that he'd done nothing wrong, and begged them not to arrest him. They responded that they were following state policy to always arrest and press charges against the male in these situations.

This was a major factor that discouraged me from sticking up for myself against my own abuser for many years. I was afraid of any argument we had getting out of control, lest neighbors call the police. Just the threat of screaming, which she did often, was a tool of control. She tried to stab me once, and as a wrestler in high school I had the reflexes to grab her wrist. So I didn't get stabbed, but have often thought ever since about what would have happened if police had shown up that night. Would I have been arrested for doing the least possible thing to protect myself from being stabbed?

aerial_coitus · 2021-08-22T14:30:38+00:00

Yes.

greyman0425 · 2021-12-17T23:39:06+00:00

Laws tend to be written gender neutral how ever enforcement and case law is not.

In an altercation with a female, the male is always assumed to be the aggressor and the greater threat. Especially if the female is a white female from a well connected family.

You only option is to escape escape escape. You put hands on her, even yell at her and the cops will get your ass. If you sit there and just take her worst, you will get arrested first until your lawyer sorts it out if he can.

Title	Is it true that the police arrest the man if he calls them on an abusive wife/girlfriend in the US?
Author	john_nash1
Upvotes	53
Comments	23
Date	August 21, 2021 10:25 PM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/p90mrs/is_it_true_that_the_police_arrest_the_man_if_he/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/is-it-true-that-the-police-arrest-the-man-if-he.1060548 https://theredarchive.com/post/1060548

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