About 90 per cent of the women at the Faye Peterson Transition House don’t report their abuse to police, says the organization’s executive director.
Duncan Macgillivray, board chair for the Thunder Bay Counseling Centre, and Debbie Zweep, the executive director of Faye Peterson Transition House, came to council Monday night in order to bring more awareness the issue of domestic violence and violence against women.
Macgillivray and Zweep recommended a number of ways to accomplish this.
One of them was to proclaim June 17 the day where “no one gets hurt”. Other ways to deal with the issue included having the agencies come to ward meetings to discuss specific issues to those areas and provide further training for police.
They also asked that council keep the issue of domestic violence on the agenda regularly.
Zweep said of the women who are in Faye Peterson, only about five to 10 per cent actually report their abuse to police.
“We have an information management system and that’s where we collect information from the women,” she said.
“We ask ‘have you been involved with the police, are there police in your life, are we calling the police?’ We can pick that variable out when we analyze it.”
With more than 3,000 incidents per year, the city has the highest rate of domestic violence rate in the province, according to police statistics.
The number of domestic violence calls in the city has doubled in the past six years.
In 2004, Thunder Bay Police Service responded to 1,107 domestic violence calls.
In 2007, it was more than 1,800. By 2010, it was 2,218 resulting in charges for more than 600 men and 100 women.
Zweep added that one in three Aboriginal women are going to experience abuse.
Many councillors asked why the group hadn’t taken their presentation to the city’s crime prevention council. Zweep fired back by saying that the crime council didn’t have domestic abuse on their agenda but wasn’t opposed to the idea.
Thunder Bay Police Service chief J.P. Levesque said the service deals with 50,000 calls a year. Out of those calls, 26,000 are reportable incidents where domestic violence would fall under.
Levesque said police recieve 3,000 to 3,500 domestic violence calls per year.
The whole process takes up a lot of resources.
A domestic violence case could take several hours for an office to complete meaning they’re at their desk and not on the street.
In order to combat the city’s high rate of domestic violence, Levesque wants to establish a specific unit to deal with domestic violence.
First response officers would deal with the immediate issue then hand over the investigation to someone from that unit.
He said he wants to see uniform officers on the street as much as possible.
“The suggestion was that we take one of our existing units, which is our focus and enforcement team, and retool what it is that they do,” he said.
“Their focus will now be on dealing with follow up when it comes to domestic violence calls. We’re really hoping we can free up the hours. These are human issues. You’re dealing with victims, victim’s children and you’re dealing with the accused.”
He added that more information will be provided in April.
