Tacoma urged to restore domestic-violence program
The city cut the program, which cost about $170,000 a year, in December 1999, citing a voter-approved statewide tax cut and a $7.5 million budget shortfall.
Critics suggest it was less about money than a lack of support for fighting domestic violence.
"It was a budget issue for them clearly to save money, but they took a valuable service away from domestic-violence victims," Ann Eft, director of the Pierce County Commission Against Domestic Violence, told The News Tribune.
"It provided a safety net of support for victims and survivors," said Lynn Abegglen, a former commission chairwoman. "It's a hole that's never been filled."
Three weeks after Police Chief David Brame shot and killed his estranged wife, Crystal, then himself, many say the need for the program is clear. However, only one paid advocate works out of the city's Human Rights Office.
Anne Crowley, the lead domestic-violence attorney in City Attorney Robin Jenkinson's office, said the city has made up for the loss of paid victim advocates by using other staff positions and volunteers.
"The taxpayers made a choice," Crowley said. "There isn't an office that's worked harder to make up for that gap than ours."
The city's first victim advocate was Marguerite McCann. She started the program in the Tacoma Police Department in 1987. The department hired two more advocates in 1993. When McCann quit in 1998, advocates were working for the City Attorney's Office, where their primary responsibility was paralegal work.
"The city of Tacoma basically went backwards," said McCann, who now works for Kitsap County helping the elderly and disabled.
Tacoma City Councilwoman Connie Ladenburg said beefing up victim advocacy is a priority being addressed by city officials reviewing services in the wake of the Brame shootings.
"It's definitely a need that we have to address in the city," said Ladenburg, who was not on the City Council in 1999 when the program was cut.
From 1987 to 1995, advocates in the Tacoma Police Department worked with detectives, read every domestic-violence report filed and tried to make contact with each victim.
When working for Jenkinson, the advocates said, they made contact only with those victims whose abusers would be charged with misdemeanor crimes, a fraction of those initially encountered by police. It was often impossible to speak with victims until days or weeks after crimes had occurred because of paperwork delays.
While under the Tacoma Police Department, the advocates handled 5,616 domestic-violence cases in 1994, by McCann's count. After the shift to Jenkinson's office, the advocates handled about 2,200 cases the year before their jobs were eliminated, city records show.
The advocates' work was not welcomed by everyone in the department.
In a November 1995 memo obtained by The News Tribune, Sgt. Jim Young, who supervised the domestic-violence unit, wrote that officials in Jenkinson's office told him the advocates were operating as "free spirits" in the Police Department and were wasting energy and resources "pursuing cases that will never be in the 'system.' "
He refused to comment to The News Tribune.
McCann wrote a five-page reply to the lieutenant in charge, arguing that the advocates would be more effective helping victims as they first came into contact with police than after cases were referred for prosecution.
Dwight Correll, a retired detective who worked with the advocates, said taking them out of the Police Department was "another ... stupid idea."
Carole Hanson, a retired Air Force lawyer, was hired to oversee the city's domestic-violence unit in January 1996, about a month after the move to Jenkinson's office. She resigned six months later, claiming her bosses — Heidi Wachter (then Heidi Horst) and Jenkinson — wanted her to give the advocates "boot-camp" treatment and force them to quit or fire them.
Wachter declined to discuss specifics in that case, saying only that she made a bad hire. Jenkinson refused to comment.
When the advocates made suggestions, they said most of their bosses in the City Attorney's Office ignored them. "We were like unwanted children you don't talk about," said Liz Richardson, a former advocate.
Wachter, now the city attorney in Lakewood, Pierce County, said the advocates' work within the Police Department was inefficient and inconsistent. She claims they chafed at her order to install a system in which every victim was guaranteed some level of service.
"They resisted change because they worried the quality of contacts with victims would suffer," she said.
Wachter and Crowley blamed the elimination of the three advocates' positions on voter approval of Initiative 695, which prompted the Legislature to slash the vehicle tax that helped fund the office.
China Fortson is now the city's lone paid advocate, working in its Human Rights Office. "I do everything, from court orders to going to court with victims to victim-impact statements," said Fortson, who estimates she sees 800 victims a year.
Nan Stoops, director of the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and other advocates said the best community programs would not have helped Crystal Brame because there is no model to address when the abuser is in the Police Department, let alone the chief.