welcome to another edition of the richmond police beat today i'd like to talk to you about domestic violence before we get into what that what we've been doing in town for the last month or so we're coming into the holiday seasons and in law enforcement and i've been doing this for over thirty six years when we when we get into these holiday seasons it brings a lot of pressure usually it's financial on families and we seem to get a fair amount of domestic assaults and other types of assaults but domestic assaults is what we're going to talk about today and what most people don't realize in the state of vermont and in most days now in this country domestic assault does not have to be the complaint does not have to be the victim when we go to an assault complaint and it's domestic and the mastic assault can be doesn't mean you have to be married that's partners that live to go gather you know could be the same sex partners it could be another family member you know a child grandparent something like that when you're living in the same household or relative related to each other and you assault that person that's domestic assault and what people don't realize is when we go to these complaints and if we see any sign of injury and one of the victims were obligated under the state law to make an arrest and we do we do make the arrests we just had one recently where one of my officers went corporal hansel to a an assault complain or a disturbance complain is what it came in and this really turned out the wife had been battered there was obvious signs of injury the husband was arrested in that case brought back here process fingerprinted photographed and taken to jail where was held billy could post twenty five dollars bail part of his conditions was he couldn't go back to the house so there are three really types of domestic abuse statues in the state of vermont there's the general domestic abuse and people say well why do we have these because there's different types of force that can be used so your general domestic assault cases this is a person who attempts to or causes or willfully causes bodily injury to a family or off sole member or willfully causes a member of a household to fear of imminent serious bodily danger doesn't mean that there was actually bodily injury you feared so if the camera man here jim comes over and picks up something and i fear that he's going to hit me you know if we're domestic partners that could be a domestic assault the penalty for that one is up to eighteen months in jail and a five thousand dollars fine which makes it a felony but also most people don't realize if you get convicted of a domestic assault in this state or any state your right to carry a fire revoked so that's under the federal law that's a normal domestic assault and that's without any injury that's you know we've been there there's an assault of some kind and there's no no injury but the person was in imminent danger of having injury then we have what's called a first degree aggravated domestic assault and the person is charged with this when he temps to he or she attempts to cause or recklessly cause a serious bodily injury to a family member or a household member so that that's pretty much plain language rate there or uses attempts to use or is armed with a deadly weapon and threatens to use that deadly weapon on that family or household member doesn't have to be a fire we had one case in town here about a year ago where they used the table  ok if you've been previously convicted of any of the domestic assaults then you're going to be charged with this first degree aggravated domestic assault and this one carries a penalty of fifteen years in jail and a twenty five thousand dollars fine and then we have your second degree aggravated domestic assault and basically it's the same thing probably you be charged with this if we had probable cause to believe that you committed a domestic assault and that you have a court order already on file and believe me we get these all the time repeated that we just had one in town and a person who recently made the regional news that we arrested five times in about a six week span for domestic assault after the first one he was charged with second degree aggravated domestic assault because there was a court order already in effect a judge has signed an order that said that that person could not harass go back to the victim's house contact the victim either by phone in person electronically which would be texting and they'd be charged with second degree aggravated domestic assault if there's a final consent or stalking order in effect they'd be charged with this the big thing with this one is the fine is five years and a ten thousand dollars penalty or both and this also any one of these these three domestic assaults if you convicted of this actually if you're charged with this under certain circumstances federal law kicks in and you no longer can have a firearm or fact if you ever got these they are in the national database and in the state database if there's a protection order it's in the state database so people think that when we go to a domestic assault complaint that the victim refuses to testify or refuses to give us a statement that's not going to affect us if we see in any injury if there's an injury to that person man or woman and most of them the victims are women they're going to be arrested and nine times out of ten there because they usually happen at night they're going to go to jail for that night into a court session or the weekend over it's  they or until they post bail most cases the judge will sign an order and that person will not be allowed back in that house until is another hearing which is anywhere from a week to three weeks out usually or they have in family court now we don't get called to every domestic assault or every call every person that's a victim of domestic assault they don't want the police involved a lot of times this is believe it or not it's financially motivated we deal with cases time and time again normally the wife is the victim or the girlfriend in the first thing will come out of them as what am i going to do about the money and i can't afford to have him in jail you know i need the paycheck or whatever that person is supplying and it gets down to a financial reason why they don't want to continue with what an assault charge but you don't have to be a victim of of domestic assault under the state law they actually have these zero pamphlets you are not alone eight on there you can get these through the victims assistance program i think there are waterbury now there's eight hundred numbers you can call for assistance the eight hundred number is two two eight seven three nine five if you need assistance with hal's ng if you need assistance with money if you need legal assistance this is a hundred number will guide you to where that is a lot of times we do it you know if we're dealing with a victim of domestic assault we all have these little stickers somewhere and the first start will be to first call and we'll call that four eight eight seven seven seven seven number or have the victim cal but you can also call the victim's assistance program and what's nice about these little handouts which we're trying to get more of they cover everything you have domestic violence you have elderly assistance hate crime resources minority resources lesbian gay bisexual tant transgender there's a hotline for that and then there's legal assistance there's actually more legal assistance and people realize it's not the fact that you're going to have to go out and hire your own attorney you can call the victim's assistance coordinator at many of the state attorney's offices the department state's attorney's has a phone number american civil liberties union has a the legal assistance to turn the general's office and they also have a victim's advocate every county prosecutor has a victim's advocate now to help you would through these processes so you're not out there alone nobody should be battered and like i said we've already had one but when the holiday season comes around we seem to get more domestic violence type calls and these will go from germany now or from around thanksgiving to after the new years when we have me around we just seem to get a spike  law enforcement in general there are no holiday seasons but i just want to talk about that if anybody ever has any questions or needs help and they can always start with their local law enforcement or state police whatever they're covered by  they all have these resources they all have these numbers if you just need a number you can call to one one now two one one has all this to one ones like the not emergency nine one one you can pretty much call two one one and get a e in almost everything from domestic violence to money issues to housing to fuel assistance you can call two one one and they'll have the information or the area they refer you to or the right phone numbers  if you ever have any questions you can call here for three four two one five six number you know if we're not here because we're not manned twenty four hours with a dispatch center here the phone is routed to the vermont state police dispatch center and they are those numbers and they will help you out even if you don't want to call the police to make a complaint you just have questions you're a victim doesn't have to be domestic assault could be a spouse or family member that's not abuse or about to holler drugs and you have questions you can call that numbers and they will get you assistance or a place to start spending a little bit while since we last talked in that time we've handle a couple hundred cases two hundred to be in  fact we've made ten arrests for those arrests have been for drunk driving that's another thing at this time of year several actually three of those for the operator of the vehicle was in the point two three or percent or above range everybody's got to remember that the legal limit of intoxication a state of mind and most dates now is point zero eight percent that's point zero eight percent we had recently just had one where corporal hansel and officer martell investigated one where the guy ran into a house over and he still wrote it will be his second dui offense and that gentleman blew a point two three eight percent and we're not talking two o'clock in the morning this was a bottle of o'clock at night and we also had a young lady that was stopped her b a c was about two point two three three percent and around eight thirty at night so there there seem to be the how they season they're drinking more and they're drinking more often and earlier and the third one we had was over two point three per point two three percent then the fourth arrest was actually under a two hero yes remember when you're point zero is the threshold you double that it point one six and we're talking these are almost three times over the limit and that's a lot of alcohol most people the common person that's not used alcohol can never get that far because they'll either pass out or get sick or fall asleep these people are used to drinking and as they become a problem for us on the highway a good thing i'm going to tell you about now is we just got one traffic safety grant that the governor's i would safety program you're probably going to see our officers out of a little bit more you know normally we just have the one or two cars out in the road but i just got one grant too and it's a dui enforcement grant and it allows me to pay the officers over time when they're not on a regular shift and come out and go and look for drunk drivers and that's all they'll be doing they won't be going to traffic calls  complaints strictly be out there doing traffic enforcement looking for the drunk drivers and i just signed off today on a second dui gram from the other three thousand dollars so that would give us six thousand dollars until next september to go after drunk drivers and you know drunk drivers are a problem everywhere in the state everywhere in the country and richmond is no different than any other town in our city and state of vermont we call conditions and the judge signs a set of conditions for him to not be in jail they have to you know the they reside someplace they can't consume possess or drink alcohol use illegal drugs after report to probation and parole summer twenty four hour restrictions and they have to you know they can't leave the place of their residence unless it's for medical emergencies court hearings or the lawyer and that's what we deal with all three of these are repeat offenders one of them we've probably arrested twelve or thirteen times now in the last six months for violating his conditions of release care again all gets  gets back down to alcohol abuse gets to drinking doesn't pay attention to his court orders we get called or we see him and we arrest him again put him back in jail for a day or two and then they release some again and court orders  but it's a criminal offense has to do two different statues on that civil and criminal if it's civil which you get five of you've lost your license we stop you you don't have the license because  suspended while the first five times we give you another traffic ticket and the first one is like two hundred twenty three dollars the second the subsequent offenses like two hundred forty three dollars when you get five of those so we had one of those and we also had this was a continuing a best a geisha and we may want to rest for a such three before the fact of a larceny and basically what this is we had prior arrested somebody or charge somebody with larceny and come to find out during the investigation which has been going on for a couple months that person was basically put up to it by another person that knowingly knew what property was being taken wasn't rightfully legal to do so so that person has since been charged so it's basically i want that portable radio over there and you go and steal it hundred thirty eight traffic tickets in town most emerge in town most of them were speeding we're seeing the beginning a lot of people forget now because their inspections are going to once a year we're getting quite a few inspection violations and we're not talking the inspections you know it just expired last week years it's expired two months ago four months ago we did get one that had been expired for a year once a year your car has to be inspected it's pretty easy to remember the number on the inspection sticker indicates that two months it's do a number two would be january february number four would be march  maine june and a still i in august and you know it just so forth would twelve be in november and december and in the collar it's not that difficult but people seem to not be doing it and sometimes because the car won't pass inspection technically if we stop you for that reason say we stop you for inspection by lation and your car is not inspected because it won't pass inspection we could issue two traffic tickets for that one for the inspection violation which is one hundred five dollars if it's more than fourteen days overdue in forty seven dollars if it's within fourteen days because you have two months to do it and we can issue the equipment violation which is  hundred sixty five dollars now i believe it is because that's the reason your car will pass inspections whatever the equipment violation is we also wrote one hundred one thousand warnings and fourteen parking tickets parking tickets now or they were off for a little bit after we didn't have the issues we did this year with the gorge because of the weather conditions but you've got to remember now they're in richmond the winter parking ban is and now i can you get the twenty five dollar parking ticket your vehicle can and will be towed because i'm a night or morning when the town highway department comes out and has to plow the roads and clear sidewalks if you're in one of those loans and your cars blocking the town highway truck may cause are only recourse than is to have your vehicle towed and you're responsible for the toll bill which can be anywhere from one hundred  two hundred dollars plus storage if you leave it there plus a twenty five dollars parking ticket but outside of that it's been fairly quiet you know we've had an end up tick in the amount of traffic accidents that we've have and the other day when the first little snowstorm came i happened to be in the state of maine when it happened but i think we had five or six accidents and or cars off the road in that one one day everybody thinks it's the interstate because they see it on the news all the time most not just the interstate you know the back roads in and richmond town i wait department is really good there that they have people on call but normally if they know something or suspect something is coming these guys are out in the shop around four o'clock in the morning trucks are going out and they're salting and sanding and plowing if it need but you know people forget even though when they see and salt and plow there are still icy and slick spots they can salt it in an hour later it can be iced over and we still see i mean we're still right now a lot of speeding tickets and this time of year our tolerance for you know everybody thinks well that ten miles an hour be ok if i don't go more ten miles an hour speed limit that's a myth you know officers most of the time look at things like traffic and weather conditions and the road conditions and if we deem that you know nobody should be going over speed limit day or maybe even the speed limit at off you're apt to get a traffic ticket or get stopped and get a speeding ticket you could be doing six miles an hour or it's still a two point violation you're the final be a little less but if we find like on that first one we had here a couple weeks ago they're not slowing down and they're going off the road or they're hitting things and then we have to do the paperwork right the traffic accident up call the wrecker get it pulled back on the road so you need to remember to slow down because  the speed limit can be what the speed limit is could be fifty could be sixty five on the interstate the law says that you have to drive at a speed prudent for existing or potential conditions which means if the speed limit is say forty five on huntington road but it's snowing now and there's ice on the road and you go off the road or you get an accident you're more than likely if we haven't stopped your prior to that joyous on the road speed limits too fast today you need to slow down and operate at a speed it's prudent for the conditions or we get the other one why have four wheel drive four wheel drive spins out and slick but slippery ice just as easy as a two wheel or front wheel drive vehicle just because you have four wheel drive and it doesn't stop any better if you're in four wheel drive than if you have a two wheel drive or front wheel drive in fact most of the time they'll stop as well because they're heavy vehicles and they just keep right on slide so you gotta keep that in mind help us out inclement weather slow down might have to go slower than the speed limit and we will have to come investigate your accident subject you to a traffic ticket and a lot of times the record bill if you have any questions on anything we ever talk about on this show you know feel free to call me again it's for three four two one five six you can leave a phone message we do answer all the phone messages we have  specifically here for each officer or myself it may not be right away but we will get back in touch with you so again for three four two one five six