The June 3 Star-Bulletin story carried the headline "People allege abuses by Big Isle cops." The story included the transcript of a phone conversation between a police officer and a woman who was calling to ask police to investigation whether her estranged husband was walking around the outside of her house. A call for help
that went awryThe Star-Bulletin did a service by presenting the excerpt of the exact conversation because simple reporting cannot duplicate the reality of actual conversation.
For example, the article begins: "A police officer, using obscenities, screamed at a woman calling to report someone outside her home last week." As we see from the transcript, the officer did indeed scream obscenities at the woman, but what we also see is a graphic example of how abuse and violence can escalate when people do not really communicate.
Obviously, the woman was afraid of her husband who apparently has been ordered off her property but who continues to harass or even stalk her. This woman has a right to feel panicky. She has read the news media or has been advised that homicides are greatest when partners to violence are separating. She has probably been advised to call 911 when she suspects her husband has been on her property.
In the meantime, the police have apparently been called a number of times by this woman and they have checked the house and have not found the husband on the premises.
What transpires in the conversation between complainant and cop is almost a classic version of how domestic violence can escalate and how the woman in this situation ended up a victim again, this time at the hands of the very source which should be her protection.
In her part of the phone conversation, the woman asked several times for the name or identification of the police officer, which was not given. She then presented several scenarios concerning her husband; that he was walking around her property and that she had also reported him for taking a motorcycle from another person's house. The officer then reports that in spite of attempts to follow up on her calls and her concerns, they have not found her husband on the premises. This is no relief to the woman, who knows she is being harassed. The conversation finally ends with the following:
"Woman: When did I tell you that he was at the house."
"Officer (yelling): I don't give a s---" etc. etc. with further obscenities and statements that the police are "sick and tired" of her.
This exchange with the officer probably sounded like conversations she had had with her husband when their marital miscommunication was escalating and possibly before there was physical abuse, which I assume had occurred in this situation. As a consequence, the woman is further abused and the police officer is now a perpetrator of verbal abuse himself.
To paraphrase Rodney King: We have to learn how to get along with each other. Certainly we public servants have to learn how to really listen and understand what is being said to us. Family members and friends also have to be more available to each other to hear what it is we need to say. There is a vast difference between "conversation," as was so graphically presented on the tape, and real "communication."
Communication is a back and forth process which leads to understanding. In this digital age where conversations are too often simply punctuations in caught time, there is little opportunity for real communication.
Domestic violence is not only the domain of the police: it affects all of us. This woman, this Laurie -- since her name was in the transcript -- also needs friends and family to lean on. And Laurie's husband needs help or confinement.
Domestic violence is everybody's problem. Maybe it can be some solace for Laurie and her police officer if they know they may have helped make it clearer how communication can so easily advance to a level of abuse. Yes, not only sticks and stones but words as well can hurt us.
Larry Lister is a professor of social work
at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.