PHILIPSBURG--Attorney Geert Hatzmann has sent a letter to the Chief Public Prosecutor about “the worrying arrest policy” of the Prosecutor’s Office in cases of domestic violence. Hatzman has repeatedly witnessed the arrest and detention by the police of both the aggressor and the victim of the violence in recent months.
The St. Maarten Police Force KPSM sent out a press release on Tuesday night stating, “In some instances, the partner who initially called 911 is also arrested if there is domestic violence on the part of the other party.”
The press release was sent following the arrest and detention in a police cell in Philipsburg of a 24-year-old woman who had reported abuse by her boyfriend early Tuesday morning.
What the press release does not mention is that the woman left her home in panic at 4:00am and drove to the police station in Philipsburg to report the assault.
The police arrested the boyfriend. He then made a counter-declaration stating that his girlfriend had abused him. “The young woman on Tuesday was summoned to report to the police station in Philipsburg, which she did,” police stated. “Following her boyfriend’s incarceration, she was also arrested in connection with assault and incarcerated.”
For Hatzmann, who was present at the police station during the woman’s interrogation, it came as a complete surprise that the woman was taken to the police cell after the interrogation.
“This is a quiet, hardworking young woman who is in a difficult relationship that she has been trying to end for some time. In the night from Monday to Tuesday she was asleep after working 12 hours in a row in the exercise of two jobs that she has. While she slept, her boyfriend went through her phone, got angry and attacked her, causing her to wake up. He held her in a chokehold, and when she fought to get out of there, he beat her.”
The woman spent Tuesday night in the police cell because her boyfriend has scratches on his body and the police “had to do further investigation”. However, a second interrogation of the woman did not take place. She was released by the police on Wednesday afternoon by order of the prosecutor.
Hatzmann calls the course of events “extremely bad.” In his letter to the Chief Prosecutor, he says: “The arrest policy of the Public Prosecution Service means that both partners are arrested if they have “not left themselves completely unsaid” during the incident. It is a rather vague criterion. But practice shows that both the police and the Public Prosecution Service very quickly assume that it has been fulfilled.”
A woman who just came home from her evening shift a few hours ago does not go to the police station at 4:00am for fun, Hatzmann said.
“When you are abused by your own partner in your own home, it is a very humiliating and traumatic experience. And then it is not acceptable that a public prosecutor has this woman arrested half a day later because she ‘would not have left herself unsaid’. I did not have the impression that the public prosecutor cared for even a second about what suffering she caused my client,” Hatzmann stated in his letter to the Chief Prosecutor.
The arrest of the victim does not stand alone. In a case a few months ago, a rather small and petite woman who was cooking in her apartment in Cupecoy in the evening was attacked by her much larger and hefty friend who had come home drunk.
Hatzmann: “The woman screamed in fear and pain, after which a security guard came to take a look. The friend managed to convince this man that he and the woman had a short and violent argument that had been a bit of a struggle. Almost immediately after the departure of the security guard, the woman’s friend becomes aggressive again. During the skirmish, the man’s phone is killed. The security guard came back to the screams and called the police. A short time later, both the man and the woman were arrested.”
Like the 24-year-old woman, this woman also spent a night in the police cell in Philipsburg.
Another recent domestic violence case involves a man who fled from his house to escape his angry wife who tried to stab him. Residents saw and heard the commotion and called the police. “A short time later, the rabid wife was arrested,” Hatzmann said. “But also the man, who is still dazed in the vicinity of his house, is handcuffed and taken to the police station! So even if you don’t even try to defend yourself, you run the risk of being handcuffed.”
Hatzmann argues that the prosecutor should “use her common sense” and “show empathy.” “My message will be clear to you: the police and the Public Prosecution Service really cannot continue on this path,” Hatzmann wrote.
Each case of relational violence is unique and should be judged on its own merits, Hatzmann concluded. “A Prosecutor must be on top of a case from the onset and, if necessary, just like the defence lawyer on call, come directly to the police station to assess whether it is really urgent that a victim has also been identified as a perpetrator and is deprived of his or her freedom. “
