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Monday, February 01, 1999
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
County speeds up protective process
A woman's slaying spurs changes in how requests for orders in domestic violence cases are handled.
By Glenn Puit
Review-Journal
Just hearing the name Brenda Denise James leaves Clark County Domestic Violence Commissioner Patricia Doninger with the chills.
James, a 29-year-old mother of six, was shot to death in front of her children in October, shortly after applying for and receiving a temporary protective order against her lover.
"She had written in her application that there was the potential for violence, that he owned a gun and that she feared for her safety," Doninger recalled of James' application for a protective order, which Doninger reviewed and approved.
Robert Lee Carter, 30, of Las Vegas was charged with murder in the shooting. He has pleaded innocent, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in the case.
No one can say whether the prompt serving of the protective order would have prevented James' death, but what has bothered Doninger is the fact that the order was never given a chance to work.
Doninger decided there must be a way to do it better. In reviewing James' case and others like it, one thing was clear:
"We weren't getting the protective orders out fast enough," she said.
In response, Doninger committed the county's Family Violence Center to decreasing the wait for traditional domestic violence protective orders in the county.
In the last three months, the office has fine-tuned the process and cut the waiting period for the issuance of a protective order in most cases from 48 to 24 hours.
"In order to cut down on the waiting period, we had to restructure the way a lot of people did things in this office and also convince our employees to make sacrifices, so we could get them (protective orders) out sooner," said Doninger, who was appointed to the commissioner's position in June following the resignation of former Commissioner Jack Fields.
Previously, applicants seeking protective orders would fill out the application and then wait for Family Violence Center employees to file the request with the Family Court clerk's office.
Now, applicants file the requests themselves.
"We shaved off a lot of time by having the applicants file their requests immediately," said Wendy Wilkinson, whose office receives protective order applications. "We also have our employees picking up the applications at the clerk's office three to four times a day and then taking them directly to Commissioner Doninger's office. Now she can look at three or four cases at a time instead of 20 or 30 at a time."
Unfortunately, the streamlining of operations at the Family Violence Center does not guarantee the prompt serving of protective orders by deputies at the county's Civil Processing Section. Once a protection order is issued, it still takes about four to five days for deputies to serve the document to the batterer.
In James' case, that delay caused the protective order not to be served in time.
"They are doing the best they can with what they have to work with," Doninger said. "They are simply overwhelmed with the volume or orders they have to serve."
Metropolitan Police Department administrators overseeing the Civil Processing Section did not respond to two separate requests for an interview.
Wilkinson said she has been informed police have hired additional deputies to help with the backlog. Police also have allowed deputies to receive overtime and work on Saturdays.
"They are doing the absolute best they can to keep up," Wilkinson said.
The issue of immediately serving temporary protective orders would seem to be of the utmost importance for Las Vegas law enforcement.
Conservative estimates by the Police Department indicate 20 percent of 1998's 121 slayings involved domestic violence.
Some police officials said the actual figure was closer to 30 percent.
In addition to domestic violence, protective orders can encompass child support, custody and visitation rights. Violating a protective order can translate into a misdemeanor charge carrying a potential $1,000 fine and a jail sentence of up to six months.
Wilkinson said she thought the changes at the Family Violence Center had the potential to save lives.
"It is subjective, and as far as direct benefits are concerned, I can't give you exact numbers," Wilkinson said. "But anytime you are talking about providing some form of a safety service, the quicker you can offer it, the better the intervention you are providing."
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