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OPINIONS
Tom Miller: State must upgrade system to protect more victims
Domestic violence has been a major problem in West Virginia for many years. Seven years ago, amid growing concern because of 18 deaths attributed to domestic violence, the Legislature passed a law directing the State Police to establish a statewide computerized registry of domestic violence protective orders (DVPs).
Two years later, lawmakers created a domestic violence fatality review team to make annual reports on domestic violence deaths. In its only report so far just a few months ago, that group's top recommendation was "assure police access to a statewide DVP database."
Sadly, though the number of deaths linked to domestic violence has more than doubled in the last few years, this electronic database that would help law enforcement at all levels identify offenders and hopefully prevent many of these violent deaths still is not fully operational.
The shooting death of a young Kanawha County mother by her longtime boyfriend earlier this month is the latest evidence of how vital it is that this registry be activated for all levels of law enforcement. She had an active domestic violence protective order on file against her alleged killer when she was shot and killed.
Had the system created by the 2001 Legislature been up and running at the time, the Dunbar police officer who stopped the young man and the victim earlier the same day as the fatal shooting might have taken him into custody instead of merely giving him a ticket for driving on a suspended license and possession of a small amount of marijuana.
A fully operational registry might also have put the alleged killer in jail two months earlier when he was arrested and charged with three misdemeanor crimes, including leaving the scene of an accident. Instead, a Kanawha County magistrate hearing the case used a computer system that is different even from the same county's circuit court electronic records, so she didn't have access to a felony conviction two months earlier and three other misdemeanor convictions that resulted in a sentence of two years probation.
She did have access to his extensive arrest record in the past but still released him on a personal recognizance bond that allowed him to avoid going to jail. The state Supreme Court is working on a plan to put every court in West Virginia on the same computer system but that won't be ready until 2012, according to the most recent estimates.
A statewide registry for sex offenders, which thankfully is a much smaller pool than the listings for DVPs, has been available on the State Police Web site for years. Angela Saunders, director of court services for the West Virginia Supreme Court, told The Charleston Gazette recently that the DVP registry should be fully implemented in September of 2008.
The court got an $815,000 grant from the federal Office of Violence Against Women nearly a year ago. It is funding the registry and is also aimed at creating a statewide Firearms Enforcement Task Force to keep guns out of the hands of persons who are the subjects of domestic violence protective orders.
Then -- and only then -- can this state's relatively strong domestic violence laws be adequately enforced.
Meanwhile, one of the great lines by nightclub comic Woody Woodbury back in the '60s was the one about the Navy's plans to name a new missile "civil service" because they couldn't fire it and they couldn't get it to work.
Unfortunately, Fred Armstrong, the former state director of Archives and History, was not covered by civil service but was an "at-will" employee. So he has little chance of overturning his superior's decision to fire him on Nov. 16, 2007, after he had been on the job for 22 years.
In one of the most recent statehouse "soap operas," Culture and History Commissioner Randall Reid-Smith, who owes his own job to political connections that prompted Gov. Joe Manchin to appoint him as Armstrong's boss, had the authority to dismiss Armstrong even if there was no good reason to do so, according to a recent ruling by an administrative law judge after Armstrong filed a personnel grievance.
Now former gubernatorial candidate Jim Lees, a Charleston attorney with a growing reputation for tackling hopeless cases, has filed an appeal in Kanawha Circuit Court where the outcome seems just as obvious.
Finally, this state is being forced into 21st century telephone technology with a trial run beginning later this week on the new area code procedures after many years with just one three-digit area code for the entire state. But starting early next year, the one 304 area code will be supplanted by a new 681 code for new service or new phone numbers.
So starting Saturday, July 26, we have seven months to practice by adding 304 to the seven numbers we usually dial for a local call. That way, when it becomes mandatory that we add the three additional digits to a seven-number phone call even to our neighbor across the street, we'll all be locked into this procedure and won't have to fuss because the call doesn't go through starting Feb. 28, 2009.
Tom Miller is a retired state government reporter for The Herald-Dispatch and a regular contributor to the editorial page.
