October is Domestic Violence Awareness month. Earlier this past week, Danville Police Chief Christopher Yates joined Linda Bolton on 1490 WDAN’s Newsmakers program. He said, so much negative and hurtful behavior, like domestic violence, is unfortunately, learned in the home.
AUDIO: The little ones that are sitting around and watching that, and they’re developing their skills from the time that they have a conscious memory to the time that they’re out on their own having to make decisions. What’s that teaching them? We have to hit it from several fronts. There’s the education part, and the prevention; and when it does happen the enforcement part; and then once cases are built, the prosecution part. And we also have to take huge consideration into building trust and confidence for the victims. If they do come forward and say ‘that’s enough,’ the system that we’ve built should provide peace for them.
Chief Yates also says, officers investigating domestic violence incidents find all kinds of attitudes from alleged victims. From being completely cooperative, to completely holding back out of fear.
AUDIO: And then there may be a victim that is willing to be cooperative, but afraid to step forward. And then sometimes we’ll go from a cooperative victim to one that’s afraid to come forward, and then one that defends the suspect or the offender, for many reasons. It’s not because they’re bad people, it’s not because they don’t like the police necessarily, it’s because they’re afraid of what might happen afterwards.
The police chief says, when you see increases in domestic violence, one of the first places to look is definitely the overall picture, in the home or the media, of what we are putting into our children, and therefore, what we see coming out later.
