Podcast on Crimes Against Women
The Conference on Crimes Against Women (CCAW) is thrilled the announce the Podcast on Crimes Against Women (PCAW). Continuing with our fourth season, the PCAW releases new episodes every Monday. The PCAW serves as an extension of the information and topics presented at the annual Conference, providing in-depth dialogue, fresh perspectives, and relevant updates by experts in the fields of victim advocacy, criminal justice, medicine, and more. This podcast’s format hopes to create a space for topical conversations aimed to engage and educate community members on the issue of violence against women, how it impacts our daily lives, and how we can work together to create lasting cultural and systemic change.
Podcast on Crimes Against Women
Enhancing Investigations of Intimate Partner Violence: Insights from Veteran Investigator Kimberly Orts
The subject matter of this podcast will address difficult topics multiple forms of violence, and identity-based discrimination and harassment. We acknowledge that this content may be difficult and have listed specific content warnings in each episode description to help create a positive, safe experience for all listeners.
Speaker 2:In this country, 31 million crimes 31 million crimes are reported every year. That is one every second. Out of that, every 24 minutes there is a murder. Every five minutes there is a rape. Every two to five minutes there is a sexual assault. Every nine seconds in this country, a woman is assaulted by someone who told her that he loved her, by someone who told her it was her fault, by someone who tries to tell the rest of us it's none of our business and I am proud to stand here today with each of you to call that perpetrator a liar.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the podcast on Crimes Against Women. I'm Maria McMullin. We're recording at the 2024 Conference on Crimes Against Women and my guest today is presenter Kimberly Orts, a seasoned investigator and founder of the Blue Opal Collective. Ms Orts approaches investigations with 30-plus years of experience in corrections and law enforcement assignments, with specialties in crisis intervention, crisis negotiations and criminal investigations. She worked as a detective investigating crimes involving intimate partners, served as a part of the Travis County Domestic Violence High Risk Team and was the primary domestic violence instructor for her agency. Techniques to enhance on-scene and follow-up investigations, while showcasing sustainable best practices to increase safety for survivors and to aid successful prosecution. One of her several presentations at the conference this year shares methods for bringing calm to chaos through report and affidavit writing, presenting real-life examples to showcase the importance of capturing and documenting the dynamics of control and fear, and using effective language. Kimberly, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:You indicated in your presentation today at the Conference on Crimes Against Women that crimes involving intimate partners are not only some of the most complex to investigate, but also the most difficult to translate into words. Help us understand the complexities of a domestic violence investigation and how that might differ from other crimes.
Speaker 3:So I think we could go so many places with that, but I think we first start with part of the label of saying that they're intimate partners and that, by design, lends to keeping things concealed, and we know that that can be for a myriad of reasons. So what I found, that what most first responders need to keep in mind, is that most survivors either didn't call the police or they didn't call the police hoping to become a part of the criminal justice system, and in that respect they don't owe us anything. So we want to keep that definitely in our mindset, and oftentimes they've called or someone has called, because what was happening was too scary or it overwhelmed their normal coping abilities and they needed or wanted help in that moment. And so we really just need to be able to go there and meet that survivor where they are and understand that there may be times that they're not going to engage with us, they may not participate in this investigation that we have an obligation to attempt, and we just really need to keep our focus so that we're not overwhelming a situation even more. In training, one of the things I've always thought about, regardless of the type of training, is that I want to train for whatever.
Speaker 3:The hardest thing might be and when we're talking about intimate partner is when we're having a non-participating survivor and to know that it's not unlike a homicide, where the victim can no longer speak, and in those cases we don't just give up and say, well, they can't talk to us. We actually focus on what the evidence tells us, what the crime scene tells us, and we go back and we peel back layers in our investigation to learn more, not only just what may have occurred in that moment, but the events that led up to it. One of the things that really frustrates me the most is that we just suspend these normal investigative practices that we use in other types of crimes. So if we, for instance, talk about a burglary, we're going to go there, we're going to assess and evaluate that crime scene. We're going to collect evidence from that crime scene. We're going to ask questions about what happened before the crime occurred. When did you leave your home? Did you lock your doors? What time did you get home? When did you discover that this crime happened, that someone kicked your door in?
Speaker 3:If we're talking about a sexual assault, thankfully we're in a day and age where we're probably going to be focusing on trying to collect evidence at a scene. We definitely have means to be able to collect evidence from a person through those medical evaluations. Potentially, and in most of those cases, you're probably going to get a detective that's going to come to your scene or meet with a survivor at the time that it happens. If we think about crimes like child abuse, we're going to have a similar protocol in that response. But what's added in that is we're going to look at things like grooming and what's most recognizable is the concept of grooming, and that's going to be literally a part of the investigation.
Speaker 3:And so I don't really understand why we still have shortcomings in our DV investigations where we literally expect that all of the evidence is supposed to come from the parties and it literally comes down to what she said and he said. So we expect our survivor to tell us everything, oftentimes when they don't want to, and then a lot of times we don't even believe her. And I can see how sometimes it happens where you might have an abuser who's very calm and collected. It happens where you might have an abuser who's very calm and collected and you have a survivor. That's very dramatic and very emotional and they're not having chronological recollection, but what we need to understand is that abuser is the person that's in the control. They're the puppet master. They have no reason to be emotional and upset like our survivor puppet master. They have no reason to be emotional and upset like our survivor.
Speaker 3:And so, unfairly, we often judge our victims, and that's a lot of times why they aren't believed because they're just not making sense and we don't really take into account the reasons why that might be, and so that's one of the reasons too. I think that we need to rely more heavily, just like in our homicide investigations, to thoroughly investigate not only what's happening on that crime scene but all of those other things that we might do, what was leading up to events, and so we just kind of need to remember to fall back on those accepted practices that we know from other types of crimes, and we really need to get away from just wanting verbal accounts and only using those verbal accounts to make decisions. What I really like, also in this day and age, is that most agencies are now equipped body-worn camera.
Speaker 3:It's able to give us a sense of what was happening on a scene. If we have a survivor who's tearful, if we have a survivor who is just very distraught, if we have a survivor who is just very distraught, where we may have an officer prior to body-worn camera that they might not have taken photos or they may not have captured those moments, we still have those. We can use those at least in our investigative processes to kind of get a grand picture not just of the event that occurred that night but kind of the movie that is these folks' lives.
Speaker 1:And when you do go to those types of events, scenes or homes where there's been a domestic disturbance, you're taking a police report right Most often. So let's talk about that and the importance of intentional language for those investigators, because they're really the first report of a crime back to the law enforcement office 100%, and if they're not getting it right on scene, the opportunities for things to go well from there are lessened.
Speaker 3:Exactly so we want to make sure and really I think the investment is providing training to those line officers that they're able to be able to conduct thorough investigations so that they can make informed decisions but not only in that is that they're accurately recording what they did and what they saw on a scene. I really strongly encourage to stay away from just summaries, to be able to kind of break down and to document what they saw and seen. What were the demeanors of the parties? What did they say? What did they not say? What did they answer? What would they not answer? And one of my favorite things to draw attention to I think that is so commonly overlooked is when someone is providing a non-responsive response. And so when I'm documenting an interview, I'm going through and say I ask the person how things escalated to things getting physical and if I have a suspect that says, well, I would never hurt her, well, that doesn't answer my question. But we kind of overlook those things and we don't go back and ask more questions.
Speaker 3:And oftentimes we don't realize that they didn't answer what we asked them. So I feel like it's really important not only to be able to operate that way during the interview, but to also reflect that in the report, because that's showing their lack of participation and usually it'll draw out with a suspect to show the purposeful intent to mislead and to confuse.
Speaker 1:So what about some examples of best practices when we have to put a name or a label on something or someone at this type of crime scene?
Speaker 3:So we want to be really cautious in how we're doing that. Probably, unlike other types of crimes, we need to have a stronger emphasis on making sure we're getting it right. And in those cases where maybe it's because someone is not participating in the investigation or they're limitedly participating in the investigation or we just aren't interpreting it and I say we, being first-line responders, we're maybe not interpreting or evaluating things right, where we feel like we can't say, okay, we don't know who the predominant aggressor is, I think it's best to come back and make sure that we're being careful how we label those people, potentially to just being involved, rather than saying that someone is a victim or someone that is a suspect. And we also want to make sure that, when we're talking about both parties, that we're not adding judgmental language to it, that we're just providing accurate depictions of the conversations and the information that they're providing, because it can be very easy for bias to seep in in a courtroom in front of a judge for any one of these types of domestic violence cases.
Speaker 1:what's really important for the judge to know about these crimes and can it be captured, at least in part, by law enforcement who have worked with these survivors?
Speaker 3:Yes, I think that most commonly, the first-line responders and investigators are probably going to interact most with the judges at the phase of probable cause. And what we have to remember is that judges can only assess probable cause based on the four corners of the probable cause affidavit. And what that means is is I can't just write a few things down within the affidavit and then sit and have a verbal conversation with the judge. They need to be able to assess all of the things through what I have written in there. So if I'm talking about probable cause specific, I have to be able to say that at a location within our jurisdiction, at a specified time or specified time range, that a crime occurred, and so when developing probable cause, I'm going to tell the story of how I that a crime occurred, and so when developing probable cause, I'm going to tell the story of how I know a crime occurred. But what I encourage people to add in domestic violence cases, we need to introduce the relationship and I like to say not just one way that they're related, but all the ways that they're related. Say that they are dating, they're biological parents of the same child, they also are members of the same household. Those are all qualifiers in Texas related to defining what the family relationship is. Possibly a defendant could dispute any one of those, but it would be very hard for them to dispute all three of them. Them dispute all three of them. So, including an accurate depiction of what the involvement of these folks are and then telling the story of the event, of what, showing that a crime occurred, but then additionally saying my survivor also reported these things have happened in the past. You know being able to go through and say we have in our archives at our agency all of these reports and you know what? I noticed a pattern where they're now increasing in frequency and they're escalating to be able to say, judge, hey, we've now been there a total of 12 times before. Those have been within the past month. That might tell a judge that some things are getting a little bit dangerous.
Speaker 3:In the agency where I worked we had an assault victim statement that was completed any time there was a domestic violence assault and included with that was a lethality screening. So something I like to include in my probable cause affidavit was to be able to provide bullet points of the questions where my victim answered affirmatively. Answered affirmatively and I would say something to the victim answered yes to the below seven of 13 lethality screening questions. So the judge would get the question and then what the survivor's response was to it. So not only am I providing the information but I'm giving the judge context.
Speaker 3:So there may be an occasion where, say, the question was, does he have a gun or can he get one easily? Well, just saying yes to that, there's a difference between getting one easily and actually having one, and so the judge can assess through all of those things. So I like to say I'm giving all of where we have opportunities for enhancements in certain crimes based on prior convictions, but it's also giving the judge a well-rounded picture not only of that relationship and the dynamics between those parties but also of that individual themselves. And so the judge is able to accurately discern whether probable cause exists. But they're also able to then use that information to say do I need to issue a protective order, do I need to issue bond orders? And also when days, weeks, months later an attorney might come back to them saying I'd like for my client to be released on bond, the judge can then use that instrument potentially to assess whether or not that would be appropriate.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that. I mean, that is a really kind of step-by-step, thorough overview of what these things need to look like, and I'm not surprised, because you do train investigators in what you refer to as tangible tools and strategies for crime scene responders and follow-up investigators. Let's talk about this approach and maybe you can break it down to give us an understanding of how this is new, innovative and incredibly effective.
Speaker 3:And I don't know that it's necessarily new or innovative I found for myself, because most of these things that we're responding to whether it was me as an on-scene officer or me as a detective doing the follow-up there's a lot of chaos to it, and so it was one of those things where I found, especially through report writing, of trying to bring a calm, to be able to have a clear depiction of what happened and to be able to present that to where whomever is reading this at whatever juncture, that they're able to say, okay, this makes sense, and so kind of bringing to that having kind of a format that I would use. If you went back and looked at I mean, you could look probably at a hundred of my reports at this point and you're going to see that my formatting of how I documented things and probably 98% I can say that confidently probably are all structured very much the same way, so that I always try to say there's sometimes there's the chicken and the egg. Is it because I know I'm going to have to generate a really clear report that I ask more questions and investigate well, or is it because there was a thorough investigation that I'm now allowed to write a really good detailed report. So being able to have kind of a structure to your report, I think, is really important. It helps you kind of decompress the scene, it helps you not become emotionally invested and it keeps you focused on the facts and reporting what happened in the most genuine and organic way, if you will.
Speaker 3:I was very fortunate to have really great working relationships with the prosecutors in my jurisdiction and I really felt that we learned from each other. Most officers think that whatever we do and everything we gain on a scene is going to be admissible in the trial, and that's just not true. So what really opened my eyes and what I think made me a better investigator is when I learned what is and isn't admissible sometimes, how things can be conditional, and learning about special laws that were in effect specific to domestic violence. So things like showing patterns of the abuse potentially could be admitted into the guilt innocence phase of a trial, where it is most likely going to be used in a punishment. So that's a little bit unlike other crimes where, say that you have a DWI where the person has already been convicted a couple of times, the jury is not going to get to know that information because they are there to assess whether they're guilty or innocent in that particular event.
Speaker 3:In Texas at least and I'm sure there are in other states that have some variances, there's the potential for some of those patterns to be able to be introduced and I think that's important to keep in mind too, because it doesn't matter if you responded to a scene where it was quote just a domestic disturbance or maybe there was an assault.
Speaker 3:If you're still thoroughly investigating and documenting and capturing those dynamics, if you're still thoroughly investigating and documenting and capturing those dynamics, that's information that might later play into one of these cases.
Speaker 3:Expert on this. But to be able to say in the basic form, it might allow for some opportunities where I might or an officer might be able to testify about things where it might otherwise be hearsay because maybe a defendant has influenced the participation of the survivor to come and testify in court. So just being able to capture those things and some things like that could be that they're showing signs of intimidation on scene, that in a jail call they're instructing them to go complete an affidavit of non-prosecution. Sometimes it could be just something as simple as professing that they're going to change or that they love our victim. So we really don't know exactly how all of that is going to be used. That's not for us to say as law enforcement officers, but if we know that there is potential for it, our job is to collect any and everything that is present during those interactions that we have, and then that allows our prosecutors to have a better, fair evaluation of what's going on and to develop their trial strategies later.
Speaker 1:I kind of was under the impression, prior to learning all of this, that there was one way to do a police report, so just thinking like well, I go in, I investigate a scene, I take the statements, I write them down and I turn it in. That doesn't sound like how it works.
Speaker 3:I think that that is the basic premise of it, but I think that there's that doesn't sound like how it works.
Speaker 3:An ex-boyfriend was stalking my survivor and she called in and said I think he's breaking into my house, I am smelling his cologne. And she was leaving for work one morning and she saw him parked down the street. She actually snapped a photo of it, which was amazing evidence for us, and she had went to work and she worked probably 10 minutes away from her home. She went to work and she was still so freaked out by what had happened that she, her boss, said go ahead and go home. And as she was driving home, she actually passed him on her route back to the house.
Speaker 3:And before, I should add, before she left that day, she just had a feeling and if there are any survivors out there listening to this trust those feelings she had put a piece of paper in the door, between the door and the door, jammed and shut the door and then she went out the back door and after she had left for work, she saw him in the neighborhood. She came back home, the piece of paper is on the floor and the room to her bedroom is open, which she never leaves open, and now her freshly laundered bedding now smells like his cologne again, and so so he was in the house while she was gone, just let himself in.
Speaker 3:He was in the house Mysteriously. In that case, she had asked for the key to be returned because they had broken up several weeks before and shortly thereafter her son's key had gone missing Was just another slight component of that. So, but in this case, the officer, he provided all of that information that she had made this report. But what I thought would would have been really great is if he would have made statements like I smelled the scent of a man, of a man's cologne. I saw the piece of paper lying on the floor. Not only did I see the piece of paper on the floor, I took a photo of it to be able to capture that, and so I think that I don't think that it's on purpose.
Speaker 3:I think that some people we have to take into account that not everyone is trained as well as others we have to take into account that everyone's experiences are different, and we have to take into account that everyone's experiences are different, and we have to take into account that sometimes you know officers are going call to call to call and they may forget some things to add in there. So but being able to be just going one step further to provide those details is what really is incredibly helpful, because we don't know where one piece is going to connect to another and it may not be today, just in during this event. But again, because we don't know where one piece is going to connect to another and it may not be today, just during this event, but again because we know DV is not isolated to single events. It could be something potentially years later.
Speaker 1:You mentioned going to back-to-back calls About. Typically, how many calls would you answer in a day?
Speaker 3:Oh, my goodness, it would really vary.
Speaker 3:During my patrol experience I worked in a very busy district. My patrol shift was 3 pm to 1 am, and I would say that it wasn't anything. We typically waited to have our dinner meal, if you will, around 9 pm when the next shift came on and usually by that time I'm at least four to five reports down is what we would say where hopefully at that point they're going to come on and start taking calls, so then we could just start doing our report writing, and in that I think one of the things that was incredibly helpful is the fact that our agency did use an assault victim statement, because I was able to scribble a lot of answers on that while I was on scene and then when I came back to write my report sometimes four, five, six, seven, maybe more hours later, I still had a good context to be able to do that without being able to go back and review the video recording of that, which may or may not be great, considering my patrol days were quite many years ago where we didn't have body-worn camera.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about what you call the upside-down case. How can investigators recognize this type of situation and approach their investigation?
Speaker 3:So I think that, just in the most minimal way to describe it, it's when the wrong person is arrested, when a survivor is arrested most frequently we'll refer to, and so I think, just going back through all of the components of having a thorough investigation, if you say that you only limit your investigation to verbal statements and you don't look at crime scenes or you don't have the advantage of a crime scene, then you're left only with limited information to be able to make your decision. And again, we know these things, they're not isolated. So being able to, if you have an opportunity and this may be hard for officers on scene because of the time constraints but to be able to go back and just say have we been to this residence before, have we dealt with these individuals in the past and, if so, what happened during those events? Because we know that domestic violence is patterned, we know that abusers have, or it's been my experience that abusers typically have a way to abuse specifically, whether it's a physical assault, strangulation, something outside of that, and we know that those things continue, sometimes with different partners, and I've had cases where I've had different jurisdictions, different survivors and they almost read identical in what happened, because these are learned practices that our abusers get really great at, and when they find something that works for them, just like we do, our tools identical in what happened, because these are learned practices that our abusers get really great at, and when they find something that works for them, just like we do our tools that we use in our everyday life, whatever we're doing, they like to use those as well.
Speaker 3:So I think the way to combat having an upside down case is to be able to use tools like determining predominant aggressor, to be able to use tools like a victim statement, to be able to look at the historicals of what has happened in the past, but to definitely investigate that crime scene. To investigate most often I would say frequently 911 callers that they don't get called back identifying and interviewing witnesses, so that when you are making a decision, that you are making it as informed as possible.
Speaker 1:That's great advice. What's your website where people can learn more about Blue Opal? It's blueopalcollectivecom.
Speaker 3:Thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe. The 2024 Conference on Crimes Against Women has ended, but you can read all about it on our website, conferencecaworg, and begin planning now for the 2025 conference that will be held in Dallas, texas, may 19th through the 22nd. Stay up to date on everything related to the conference by following us on social media at National CCAW.