Law enforcement is only recently getting better about how it responds to domestic violence, according to two police officers from the other side of Mingus Mountain.
Prescott Police Chief Jerald Monahan and Prescott Valley Police Detective James Tobin met last week with MATForce, a regional organization that focuses on combating substance abuse.
There’s a definite connection between substance abuse and domestic violence, Tobin said, though drugs and alcohol aren’t always a factor in situations that are ultimately about control.
Tobin said that traditionally, law enforcement has been slow to respond to this type of crime and that changes have started to be made in the last 30 to 40 years.
Much of the reason for that slowness to react has been a result of entrenched laws and biases dating back centuries, where women were often treated as little more than property or second class citizens.
Tobin said that for years, the phrase “rule of thumb” has been associated with a tradition that permitted a man to beat his wife provided the switch being used was no wider than his thumb.
Tobin looked back to the Code of Hammurabi, a set of Babylonian laws in the 18th century B.C.
While those rules called for severe punishment if a son hit his father, the abuse of women wasn’t treated the same way.
To read the full story, see the Wednesday, Sept. 30, edition of The Camp Verde Journal.
