Police program offering help to those facing domestic threats to expand citywide

A pilot program that offers immediate assistance to people facing potentially lethal domestic threats will be expanded to all of Wichita this year, authorities say.

Police officers have been using the domestic violence lethality assessment program in north Wichita for about the past year, and administrators are fine-tuning policies ahead of training patrol officers beginning next month.

“It helped us reach individuals that we had not previously connected with regarding services,” said Angela Lampe, executive director of the Wichita Family Crisis Center.

More than 90 percent of the center’s contacts last year came through the program and were people reaching out for the first time, she said.

In the program, officers on calls that may include domestic violence ask a series of questions to assess whether someone is at high risk of being harmed, said Capt. Brian White, commander of the police department’s training bureau.

If the danger threshold is met, the officer calls a hotline “and hands the phone over to the (domestic violence) victim and they can talk directly to the advocate,” White said. “We start the conversation for them and let them recognize there are resources out there for them.”

Immediate shelter can be provided for those who are threatened. The Wichita Family Crisis Center and Harbor House will staff the domestic violence hotline around the clock so someone is always available to take the calls, Lampe said.

Ten officers have been selected to become trainers, White said, and they in turn will train the roughly 450 patrol officers. The training takes about four weeks.

No one statistic or event brought the program into being, White said.

As head of the Patrol North bureau, White said he saw how frequently domestic violence occurred.

A day of training sponsored by StepStone, which late in 2016 opened a housing complex for survivors of domestic violence, inspired in White the need to do more. He began researching various programs used by law enforcement agencies around the country.

“We borrowed a lot of different ideas for the pilot program,” White said.

It included a lot of input from the shelter executives, he said.

The pilot program hasn’t been without its bumps, those familiar with the program say.

“We were having patrol do all the follow up” with cases, White said. “It was getting to be some heavy lifting...we might have bit off more than we could chew.”

That provision is being eliminated in the retooled policies.

Lampe said she expects numbers that are already growing to significantly rise once the program goes citywide. In the program year that ended June 30, the crisis center’s shelter housed 369 women, an increase of 25 percent over the year before.

The number would have been even higher, Lampe said, but the shelter had to turn numerous women away because there was no room for them.

“We’re still having significant turnaway numbers,” Lampe said.

Improved communication between various shelters has generally allowed those in particularly dangerous situations to find a bed if needed, she said, or at least access to services within 24 hours of their initial contact.

Even with those “significant turnaway numbers,” Lampe said, the program is being expanded because the crisis center provides support even outside the shelter.

“A significant portion of our work occurs through our outreach department,” she said in an e-mail response to questions.

The same services are available through outreach that is offered to women staying at the shelter, Lampe said. Nearly 1,000 people a year are assisted through outreach programs, she said.

It’s hard to say whether the growing numbers in requests for help reflect an increase in domestic violence or merely growing awareness of the resources available, Lampe said. But the fact that more than 20 percent of Wichita’s homicides in 2017 involved domestic circumstances serves as a sobering reminder of why they’re needed.

As simple as it sounds, Lampe said, a phone call can prove more meaningful to someone enduring abuse than a brochure or business card.

“It shows them that people really care,” she said.

This story was originally published January 8, 2018 at 6:48 PM with the headline "Police program offering help to those facing domestic threats to expand citywide."