After 35 Deaths, Philadelphia Cracks Down on Domestic Violence

In 2009, at least 35 women were killed in Philadelphia by current or former partners in cases of domestic violence (two more cases are still under investigation), nearly double the prior year's rate. You can blame our economic train wreck for that.

Twenty of these victims had called the police an astounding 178 times between them, and many already had restraining orders against the men who went on to murder them. Fat lot of good that did them.

Fortunately, the city's police are instituting new procedures to put a stop to these preventable deaths. They'll be cracking down on repeat offenders (seriously, 10 abuse phone calls from one home should send up some red flags) and keeping better data on domestic violence cases. When officers get a call and arrive on the scene, the man tells his side of the story, and it's not always simple to judge the situation when going in blind without any background information. On the other hand, if the police officer already knows someone's knocked on this door half-a-dozen times before, or that a restraining order is being violated, the picture suddenly becomes much clearer.

With domestic violence rates spiking across the country after a 15 year slow down, we need new ways to protect the female half of our population. The New York Times article reports that GPS isn't just for those of us who are directionally-challenged anymore: many states are taking the technological route and making domestic violence perpetrators wear tracking devices that sound the alarm when they get to close to their victim's personal bubble.

Unfortunately, the recession also has many states around the nation are slashing budgets for for programs for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. Domestic assault rates going up, funding for protective services going down -- that's a recipe for disaster if I ever heard one.

Photo courtesy of ben pollard's Flickr photostream.