This day (3.31.09) one Sargeant Mullen from Manhattan's Sixth Police Precinct called me regarding a letter of complaint I wrote two years ago concerning the manifest inadequacy on the part of the police in taking report/complaints from a domestic violence victim.
For starters, if the police were going to contact me in response to my letter, they owed me the courtesy of a *written* reply, so I would be able to show others precisely how they had responded.
Secondly, Sargeant Mullen called me with the sole aim of asserting that the police not only did nothing wrong but also that they did not have to do anything better.
He spoke over me, and gave me no chance whatsoever of letting him know my thoughts on the matter.
I hung up on him, because the manner in which he was speaking over me... Having called me first besides... Was a form of bullying and perhaps harassment.
He absolutely would not let me get a word in edgewise, and raised his voice so as to be sure I would not be able to do so.
The domestic violence victim involved in this specific situation was in a hospital bed with a Grade III splenic rupture, psychologically traumatized when the police came to take his report on the attack and additional subsequent alleged crimes against him by Brad (aka Bradley) Ingalls.
Ingalls has since been convicted of a *misdemeanor* assault charge. It strains the imagination to think that anybody who had their spleen ruptured in a violent attack would consider a *misdemeanor* assault charge equal to the harm done them.
In the New York penal code, the difference between a misdemeanor assault and a felony assault is the difference between an aggressor having an intent to do and actually doing "serious physical injury" and "physical injury" only.
The police did not do everything they could to develop a full array of evidence leads in this case and as a result, a conviction equal to the crime (s) committed was not obtained. The safety of the community has not been protected well enough. The police are in part responsible for this terrible state of affairs.
The victim was in no condition to volunteer a full report of crimes committed against him, he was on pain killers, and the police in taking the report gave him a bum's rush. They were not properly trained to take a full report and then help detectives and the D.A. Develop a full range of evidence leads in the case. Or, if they were properly trained, they were too lazy and apathetic to effectively employ that training.
The victim alleges that Brad Ingalls also committed reckless endangerment in the first degree with depraved indifference to human life and unlawful imprisonment against him. It should be noted that the victim did not get to a hospital until almost 39 hours after his spleen was ruptured, and that he did not get to a hospital, as per his allegations, because the abuser was refusing him help and intimidating him out of calling 911 for himself.
Yet Sargeant Mullen was only interested in shouting at me over the telephone that he had investigated and found that the police had done nothing wrong. What I wanted to hear, by contrast, and in the interest of protecting the safety of the community, was that the police understood that they must strive to get full reports from domestic violence victims, understand the gravity of the issue, and are mindful of performing their duties more effectively than they did in this case.
Sargeant Mullen in calling me on the phone had the specific, and I might say, ridiculous agenda of asserting to me that my letter of complaint was not justified.
But that letter absolutely was justified, and the fact that Sargeant Mullen of the 6th Police Precinct in Manhattan refuses to acknowledge a need for the police to improve in their job performance in this specific area shows that the community is no safer today than it was more than two years ago when this occurred.
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