Agencies cooperate on county domestic violence task force

For more than 20 years, a coalition of local advocates, prosecutors and law enforcement officers has been combating domestic violence in Bloomington.

Since 1990, the Monroe County Domestic Violence Task Force has been meeting on a monthly basis. Its focus is more about creating an open forum for discussion than anything else.

“Communication is always difficult across sectors,” said Toby Strout, Middle Way House executive director. “Different institutions have different ways of doing things.”

Middle Way House, a domestic violence and rape crisis center in Bloomington, is one of the organizations on the task force. Strout said the task force brings the advocacy perspective to the table in meetings and conferences.

“When it comes to advocacy organizations, natural tensions between enforcement and advocacy are bound to exist,” she said.

But when Middle Way proposed the idea for a task force in 1990, it wasn’t necessarily because of a problem between the two entities. Strout said there was just room for improvement.

“We were headed toward a coordinated effort, and a task force seemed just the way to go,” she said. “After 21 years, my evaluation of it is that it’s been good, and if anything else, it’s been keeping us talking to each other. We have a better understanding of each other now.”

Beverly Calender-Anderson, director of Bloomington’s Safe and Civil City Program, serves as the administrative liaison with the task force. It meets at noon the third Friday of every month at City Hall, 401 N. Morton St.

“The goal is to coordinate information, training and open communication between providers,” she said. “We knew if we all were at the same table, each agency could better explain why they do what they do. With open minds, it just made for better communication and better service to the clients.”

Calender-Anderson said the group has evolved since its inception. When it was first conceived, the task force served to bring advocates, enforcers and lawmakers together to promote collaboration and communication.

The task force organized annual conferences to promote awareness, working to shed light on each aspect of the problem.

Last year, the task force provided lethality training for local law enforcement.

“The lethality assessment tool was developed so when an officer walks into a situation, he or she has a checklist to assess the possibility of it becoming lethal, or deadly, or an even more dangerous situation,” she said.

Monroe County Sheriff’s Office Detective Sgt. Brad Swain has been a member of the task force for eight years. He said it has bridged the gap of understanding between advocacy and enforcement.

“I think, from my experience, it’s likely they do a good job of raising awareness that domestic violence does exist,” Swain said. “In my 26-year career, law enforcement has evolved to being proactive to prevent these things from happening.”

This year, the force’s annual conference will be directed toward the city’s faith-based community because a church or religious home might be the first place domestic violence victims turn to, Calender-Anderson said.

Each meeting, a different agency is responsible for creating the agenda, which Calendar-Anderson said brings different perspectives.

“There have been tensions time to time over the years, but I think we have to accept tensions as inevitable in this work as long as we respect each other,” Strout said. “We could serve as a model ... our ability to hold it together. It’s easy to say, ‘This is too difficult, this is too uncomfortable.’”

But Strout said this has never happened. Everyone keeps coming back.

She said the force’s influence can’t be measured in numbers or crime rates because an increase in awareness usually only means an increase in reports, not a decrease in domestic violence.

“People are still learning, but eventually we will be able to say, ‘Isn’t it time that we
reduce it?’”