Domestic violence resulting in homicides remains a high concern for local law enforcement.

The work underway to prevent more deaths, plus protecting our officers utilizing advanced technology, that's this week on Nevada Week .

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

Welcome to Nevada Week .

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and a new report suggests the situation is improving in Nevada.

But that's not the whole story.

That discussion is ahead.

But first, a look at some of the new technology the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department recently showed off at the 5th annual Lunch with the Sheriff .

Metro says other police departments across the country and even the world are taking notice and seeking advice on how to implement it themselves.

(Sgt.

Brad Cupp) It's a gas/electric hybrid.

It flies for about three to five hours on a single tank of gas.

-This is the Skyfront Perimeter 8.

-It's the first of its kind that the department has invested in.

-And in the future, Sgt.

Brad Cupp says the experimental drone may be the first first responder at a Metro crime scene.

-We're trying to use this as our drone as a first-responder aircraft so that we can provide real-time air support to our officers that are responding to calls for service.

They can see what the aircraft sees, and we can also stream that video back to our fusion center so that they can view the video in real time.

So if it's a large mass casualty event or, you know, an active shooter-type of event, the people that are making the decisions that are running the operation can actually see what the drone sees in real time.

-Do you know of any other police departments using this?

-I don't.

There are a few that have become interested in it since they found out that we've been testing it, and I wouldn't be surprised if it-- if this particular aircraft catches on in the near future.

-Already in use, says Sgt.

Cupp, is the BRINC LEMUR S. As seen here, the new drone can fly indoors and communicate with suspects.

-Without having to have a pilot in close proximity, so none of our officers are in danger while they're looking for an armed and dangerous suspect.

It also is equipped with two-way cellular communication.

So our negotiators can actually call a phone number that's associated with the drone and be able to talk to the suspect inside and try to negotiate a peaceful surrender.

The scenario was, basically, there was a disturbed suspect that was inside.

He possibly had a knife and was destroying the apartment.

Through negotiations, they were able to talk the suspect down.

And the suspect said that he was laying on the floor, was complying, had his hands behind his back.

And in the past-- You can see the suspect there.

In the past, we would have had no way to check if the suspect was actually doing what he was saying he was doing without having to put somebody in harm's way to see if the suspect was actually doing that.

-And that technology can also break glass.

-The suspect that was barricaded in the car with a knife, they wouldn't come out.

So we used the window breaking tool on the drone to breach the window so that we could easily communicate with her.

-The glass robot literally breaks down barriers to communication, says Sasha Larkin, Dep.

Chief of Homeland Security at Metro.

(Dep.

Chief Sasha Larkin) We've used it on maybe a suicidal subject or subject that needs help or subject armed with some sort of weapon.

-According to the national nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center, 1 in 5 calls to law enforcement involve a person who may be experiencing a mental health crisis.

And while technology helps, human intervention remains crucial.

-So Clark County Detention Center is the largest mental healthcare provider in the state, right?

-That's sad, though.

-It is sad, but we're getting better.

And listen, today we have community partners here with us like SafeNest, where we've really learned how to close the loop on calls.

Because it used to be-- And, unfortunately, Nevada always bears the title of being first, second, or third for domestic violence-related homicides.

Not a title we want to carry.

But by partnering with nonprofits like SafeNest, they're able to come in and give the victim the assistance, the attention, the support they need to get out of a dangerous, volatile, and often deadly situation.

-Any of this technology can help with that?

Is there any?

-Well, listen, some things require human nature, human touch, right?

And that's what SafeNest does.

So combined with technology, nonprofit organizations plus the police and community support, I think we have a winning recipe.

-And with that, we bring in SafeNest now.

Liz OrtenBurger is SafeNest's CEO, Nevada's largest and most comprehensive charity dedicated solely to solving domestic violence issues.

And joining her is Capt.

Tim Hatchett with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

Thank you both for sharing your time.

To expand further on the human touch that Sasha Larkin was talking about, Capt.

Hatchett, you launched Project 417 that deals with this.

How does it work?

(Capt.

Tim Hatchett) Well, as I mentioned, we launched it together.

-Okay.

-That's the biggest effort, I have to say, because the partnership is what makes us work.

And fundamentally, I was up at Northwest, actually with Sasha, and we were having a huge uptick of domestic violence-related homicides.

And she came to me one day and said, Hey, we got to figure out a plan to address some of this.

And I had been thinking throughout the years on some of my conversations I had with victims and just some of the things I observed.

And one of the items I recognized was we were always struggling with getting resources or explaining resources to victims.

So what we did is we really did a top-down assessment.

We sat down with officers.

We sat down with detectives.

We looked at our victim advocates.

We looked at our approach for investigations.

And we saw-- We basically analyzed, like, How can we do this more effectively?

How can we improve?

How can we bring different partners in to basically establish a better response to domestic violence?

And that's what we did, a 360 assessment.

And with this, we basically recognized that we needed to do a little bit improvement on investigations.

One of the items that we improved upon was we would traditionally go out and we would do an investigation, and if the suspect was no longer there, we would take the report and, we were so busy that day, traditionally the report would go up to the D.A.

's Office, and they would issue a warrant for their arrest.

Well, what we started doing is reissuing those reports to the following shift to see if we can go and actually find the suspect.

Because if we actually arrested the suspect that time, we could actually get a protective order for them right then and there.

So that's why our partnership with SafeNest was so important, because it was reinstilling the efforts to actually apprehend, teach our officers and our investigations, understanding the red flags associated with domestic violence, both strangulation and then, surprisingly, when victims' dogs and animals are injured.

Those are one of the primary signs for related to homicides.

So we had to go back and just give these little pointers on how to better analyze these efforts, teach them how to interview victims, and then also work with the D.A.

's office.

So, in turn, it was a big effort.

And we partnered with SafeNet.

And we did a little pilot to say, Hey, is this even going to work?

Is this ever going to come, you know, come to fruition and really going to connect with the officers, because we had never done anything like this in the past.

Traditionally, officers worked on their side, and victim advocates worked on their side.

And we really believed that if we paired the two together, we could really build relationships--both on the officer side, on the victim advocate side, and also with the victims--because the number one goal was just serving that victim, right?

So, fundamentally, we did a very small pilot with several hundred calls for service.

We analyzed that.

Our homicides went down to virtually none.

Our repeat calls for service fell dramatically.

And the feedback we got with our officers was, Finally we had an opportunity to connect people to services that we always struggled to get them to, whether it was safety planning-- A lot of victims have a really hard time understanding, like, Hey, when I do decide to leave, it might not be today, but when I do, what is that plan?

Like, how am I going to get out of here?

If I have children, how am I going to take care of these children if I get out of this location?

And, you know, SafeNest would go out and work with them to establish some of those plans, identify ways to get out of those households, and sometimes they wanted to remain in households.

They could provide them with counseling, additional resources, but when there was a really significant threat, we could get them out into a temporary shelter, emergency shelter.

So all those efforts really started from scratch, and it's really working with this partnership to establish the goal of reducing homicides with domestic violence.

-And that was back in 2017-- -Correct.

- --with this launch?

That was the first year you were CEO at SafeNest.

What was the feedback from your team about implementing this?

(Liz Ortenburger) Yes.

So, first, I just want to say thank you to the Raiders, because they funded the pilot.

That was a gift from the Raiders right when they first came to town.

And then Nevada Women's Philanthropy really made the partnership go 24/7/365.

So thanks to those two entities for really helping us.

But incredibly to me, I was fairly new in my position, there was a lot of pushback from my staff internally to implement a partnership with Metro.

I came to find, as I became a more mature executive, that unfortunately that resistance is around the country of domestic violence agencies working with police.

There's a-- There's just some biases there, and there's some lack of partnership there on both sides.

In spite of the fact that the data is clear, only 4% of women in the 12 months before they're murdered will reach out to an agency like SafeNest, but 86% will have an intersection with police.

So why would we not want to be where the 86% of potential homicide victims are there?

So we, you know, when Tim asked me to undertake this, I first did what any executive should do and said, Let's look at the data.

The data was clear.

We also have seen the data very clearly articulate that when there is a working relationship between police and domestic violence agencies, homicides go down.

So all of that made sense.

So as soon as I hit my staff with data, their resistance was weakened.

But then it was a lot of work with Tim and I sitting in meetings, Why aren't we doing TPOs on scene?

Why aren't-- -"TPO" stands for?

-I'm sorry.

Restraining orders or temporary protection orders.

We can do emergency temporary protection orders on scene.

And Tim would ask, Why aren't we doing those?

And I, Well, let me find out.

And we'd sit down, and we would hammer through the details.

And I will tell you the thing that was great was there was vulnerability on both sides.

SafeNest had things it needed to improve, and Metro came to the table and said, Hey, here's the things that we can do better as well.

And since then, we've been-- Annually we are on over 6,000 calls, I think, since we've piloted.

We've probably been on well more than 10,000 calls alongside Metro, and it's been fantastic.

-I imagine one of the concerns from your team was the safety of your advocates that go out to these scenes.

About two weeks ago, Metro Officer Truong Thai was shot and killed responding to a domestic violence call.

SafeNest likely wasn't there at that moment because the scene hadn't been secured; is that correct?

-That's correct, right.

So you are right.

That was a concern that my staff had.

And what we talk about is Metro gets the scene safe and then we respond.

And we have had scenes be secure and then move into active-shooter situations.

And whoever the responder is, the Metro responders on site, they let our advocate know, Hold off; don't come.

So the communication is really there.

So, yes, we come in when the scene is safe, and Metro stays on scene while we provide our advocacy.

If Metro needs to leave, we leave and we continue the conversation on the phone.

But we generally get-- I think our average time on scene is between 30 and 45 minutes, which was a commitment that Metro had to make was we're, essentially, taking at least one if not two officers out from another call that they could be on to stay on the scene to do this.

But that's what it takes in order for us to see that collective downturn of repeat phone calls.

-How dangerous are these domestic violence calls for police?

-Well, they're both very dangerous, but they're also very routine.

And I think that's what makes them so dangerous.

This year so far, we've responded to about 50,000 domestic violence calls so far.

And, actually, I show a decrease from the years before.

So it's a very common call.

Basically, we would say both the car stops and domestic violence are probably our most violent calls because of the unexpected consequences of those calls.

-And what makes it dangerous outside of it being routine?

-Well, fundamentally, there's a lot of-- You know, you have two individuals there at one point that cared about each other, and a lot of times they call when they have no one else to call.

And that's why it was imperative to also bring another partner in because sometimes they really don't want the police there.

So sometimes when we arrive, we're there to help, but then we become, unfortunately, the person that they're not a big fan of, because we are required under state law to make a mandatory arrest.

So fundamentally, we're there to do that primary investigation and determine if a crime has occurred.

But, you know, our focus isn't traditionally on connecting people to resources, even though we tried to do that with just our best effort.

So that's why it's good to bring someone who's really focused on those victim efforts and those avenues forward to help get them out of that situation, who can just focus in on helping the individual.

-Was that one of the biases that your team was concerned about, that sometimes they don't want interaction with police, these victims?

-Yeah.

Actually, one of the first questions my staff had is, Can we grade the police on their response?

And what was really great about that is Tim had offered early on, Come and do a ride along.

And so I went and did a ride along on a grave shift which was overnight, which was fantastic because what I saw was Metro using the proper tone of voice.

They were clearly well trained in domestic violence.

They were doing everything that I would ask an officer to do, yet they were getting such resistance from a survivor.

And it wasn't anything to do with the officer.

It was that, generally, officers are male, and they're always in uniform.

And that right there can be enough for a survivor to be like, Oh, this is not great.

Also, you know, Tim said "mandatory arrest."

That's a 12-hour hold.

Someone who is abusive is now coming out of jail after 12 hours, not happier than when they went in.

So we've got an explosive situation on that back end.

So what we're able to do is go in and say, Look, we have no pathway here if you don't want to press charges, if you don't want to follow this through from a justice lens, but what we want to do is talk to you about what your options are and what your safety plan is, because these are the likely next couple of days and what we can expect and what this can look like.

But a lot of times, too, what we're looking at is this is the breadwinner for the family that has been now taken away.

So we're-- It's not between incarceration and happiness; it's between incarceration and homelessness.

And so now I'm gonna experience that because I no longer have access to revenue.

Where's rent coming from?

Where's all these things?

So, you know, domestic violence is incredibly messy in that there are so many interlinking ways in which a survivor can't find an avenue to safety.

And we cannot expect officers to know all of this.

I've worked in this field now for six years, and I still learn something almost every day about what we're working with.

So what our advocates are able to do is say, Look, let's deal with the immediacy of the safety in the situation, and then let's get you connected to long-term solutions.

Because for some of our clients, it is very real.

They're going to stay in that relationship for three to six more months, and then they're going to find an exit on their terms.

And that is going to be a lot stronger exit and a lot better chance of that exit staying in place and not returning to the abuser, because they've had a chance to evaluate what that path looks like.

So it's a starting point, really, for survivors to find safety, -A well-informed exit.

I want to get back to finding safety, transitional housing, in a bit.

But let's talk about the state of domestic violence right now in Southern Nevada.

At the end of June, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that at least eight people had been killed as a result of domestic violence.

Where are we at right now?

-We're currently in a downward trend.

What you saw was when-- We were previously in a downward trend when we were working on the infancy of this program.

But when COVID hit, you saw the numbers influx pretty dramatically.

So you saw a large influx, and then it declined slightly, another influx, and then it started to decline.

So we're actually on another pathway of decline.

So right now, we just need to keep on focusing during the holidays and keep on focusing our efforts forward.

-And the holidays are a trigger.

What was it about COVID?

-You know, I want to say what was-- If we want to find a bright point in that data, domestic violence absolutely went up.

Metro and we, SafeNest, shared data together, 20% sustained increase over really a two-and-a-half-year period.

If we were doing-- -Still?

Are you still seeing-- -We've seen a downturn.

But if we were looking at predictive analytics for homicides, we should have seen 35-plus homicides, and we sort of crested the pandemic with 22.

So while it's not the sort of massive downward trend all of us would hope for, it is proof that what we're doing does matter, because we didn't just follow the trend.

So that's important information.

The holidays are difficult, you know?

Many of us have fantastic holiday memories from being kids, but many of us also don't.

And so what can be really difficult around the holidays is the stress.

We as a society put a tremendous amount of stress on material possessions around the holidays.

If I am someone who is prone to using violence and I'm stressed, that tends to come out.

We also know that 70% of men who abuse also abuse alcohol.

The holidays are a time when people tend to drink more.

So all of this wrapped up can, unfortunately, be a tragic holiday season for some.

So lower the temperature on the stress for folks.

Also recession.

When we hit the recession last time around, our domestic violence homicides spiked.

That financial stress is an absolute layer of what triggers people who could use violence into using it.

-Do you know how many domestic violence killings there have been within your jurisdiction so far this year?

-Yes.

Unfortunately, currently, it's we're at 17.

We're actually slightly lower than we were last year.

So like I said, we have to keep the trend going.

-Okay.

And what do you attribute the slight downturn to?

-Partnerships and really working in getting the communication out to the entire state of what effectively we need to be focusing on for domestic violence.

And as you probably know, in the previous years, we were listed in the top 10 for domestic violence.

We fell off that list this year.

And really it's just constantly having that repeated conversation, working not just with law enforcement, community partners, politicians, community members to really recognize what the underlying issues with this is and understanding that the long-term efforts associated with what needs to be done to help individuals who fall within domestic violence.

-Talking about those numbers, the Violence Policy Center came out with its annual "When Men Murder Women" report, and it ranks states by how many women are murdered each year due to domestic violence.

Nevada ranked 18th in the country in the most recent report that came out in September.

The year prior ranked third, and the year prior to that, seventh.

But the data that they use is two years old.

So this year's report is from 2020 data.

We can still say we're making progress, Liz?

-Yes.

So the program, again thanks to that Nevada Women's Philanthropy grant, went 24/7/365 in 2020.

So we will take some credit in this partnership for helping really curb what could have been a much more dramatic increase during COVID.

So it makes sense to me that the 2020 data is down.

I think we'll see that we'll follow that trend, at least as I looked at Tim's data.

Some of that is out of our hands, though, because if there is, like-- For example, a rural community, I think three or four years ago, had a five-person domestic violence homicide scenario.

So our goal will be to continue to expand the program as far reaching as possible in the state of Nevada, because the value is there and it certainly saves lives.

-How well is the state of Nevada doing supporting domestic violence victims?

-You know, when we-- The number one most common question I get asked is, How do we stop domestic violence, right?

How do we end domestic violence?

And that is working with kids and youth.

And I would say that in our educational space, particularly the Clark County School District, we have work to do on how do we promote and have healthy education available for children, healthy relationship education available for all school-aged kids.

It has absolutely nothing to do with sex education; it has everything to do with, Where is it appropriate for you as a child to get information about what should be expected in your household?

Because here's what folks that grew up in nonviolent households have a hard time understanding: If you're growing up in a violent household and that violence has been from the day you were born, how do you know that that's not what everyone is experiencing?

Because that is how a child's brain works, and we have no far-reaching education within the state of Nevada that gives kids a platform to understand what is appropriate in just relationships.

Nothing to do with the intimate side of that relationship, everything to do with, How should I be treated by my uncle?

Is it okay to be touched where my swimsuit would go?

Those kinds of things, because what we create when we don't educate our most vulnerable youth is pathways into trafficking, pathways into violent relationships, and, ultimately, sexual assault and all the things that go along with that.

-And you're saying currently, there is no education in that area?

-It is spotty; it is spotty.

I think some-- I don't want to throw every school district under the bus, but we have fantastic partnerships with Bishop Gorman, Faith Lutheran, and other places where we are able to do programming and support around these things.

Clark County School District has been reticent to allow this kind of education into their-- into their schools, which means the majority of kids in the fifth largest school district in the country are going without tools and resources to help prevent these things from progressing.

-We only have a little bit of time left, but the transitional housing, having a place to stay when you-- when you are leaving a domestic violence situation, how crucial is that from your perspective?

What's the need there?

-At the time and place when we know that there's an immediate risk, it's exceptionally crucial.

For the number one thing is: Can we connect them with family members, if we can get them out of the state, do we have a resource locally, do we have somebody we can call?

Now we do.

And that's why it's so important.

And one of the interesting things I'd like to bring up is over the last five years, traditionally about 34% of the people we make contact with that were homicide victims, they had, the suspects had no prior contact, no criminal contact with law enforcement; they had no prior arrests.

Currently, we're up to 48% of those individuals.

So we're actually-- Outside partners are more important now than ever.

Because right now, about 48% of our victims, the suspects had no prior contact with law enforcement as far as arrests, citations, things of that nature.

So people having a household, knowing within their household, Hey, these are the resources.

This is the go-to name, SafeNesst, not just in Nevada, in every single state.

It's so important because, as I mentioned, sometimes people just because they haven't called doesn't mean domestic violence is not occurring in their house.

A lot of times this is occurring one, two, three, multiple times.

And by the time we get there, it could be, you know, far past what we can help them with.

And if they can get to a resource, let's say SafeNest, very early on, they can hopefully get out of that situation.

-We're gonna continue this conversation, you and I, Liz, on Nevada Week In Person .

Thank you both for sharing your time with Nevada Week .

And thank you for watching.

If you or someone you know needs help getting out of an abusive situation, SafeNest's 24/7 hotline is 702-646-4981.

Their website is safenest.org.

And all of this information, plus additional resources, can be found on our website, vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

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