This October was marked both as domestic violence awareness month and breast cancer awareness month. That's ironic, Pittsburgh police Sgt. Eric Kroll told residents gathered Wednesday night for a public safety meeting in Sheraden.
“They have two parallels,” he said. “One, it affects a lot of families. The second is, if something’s not done about it, it’s going to be lethal.”
In 2013, city police responded to 10,622 calls for domestic violence, the sergeant said.
“Every shift, an officer is going on a domestic violence call,” Sgt. Kroll said. “The violence is constant."
One tool the department is planning to introduce against domestic violence in 2015 is a new smartphone app that directly correlates with the existing Lethality Assessment Program, an 11-question survey that officers ask on a call scene to prevent intimate partner homicide.
One question on the survey is: “Does he follow you, spy on you or leave you threatening messages?”
Officers administer the surveys to victims in all domestic violence incidents, even if an arrest is not made, Sgt. Kroll said.
[For more of this story, written by Madasyn Czebiniak, go to http://www.post-gazette.com/lo...stories/201410300239]
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