Homicide checklist helps pinpoint imminent danger

Main story: Putting police response on trial  

MONTREAL â€" Looking at the homicide risk checklist that police began using just months after Maria Altagracia Dorval’s murder in Montreal North on Oct. 17, 2010, one can’t help but wonder if it could have saved her life.

The checklist helps police officers determine whether a woman is in imminent danger of being killed by her partner, and needs emergency protection.

“Has your partner ever used a weapon against you?” is one question.

Dorval told police a week before her death that two months earlier her estranged husband, Edens Kenol, had held a knife to her throat, and threatened to kill her and her children and then himself if she left him.

“Are you a victim of harassment? Have the number and seriousness of violent acts increased recently?”

Dorval told police that for the past few months, Kenol had been turning up at her apartment unannounced, knocking violently at the door, following her around in his car, and calling her incessantly.

“Are you in the process of getting a divorce?”

Kenol had moved out of the apartment about three months before the slaying. Dorval told police she was about to file for divorce.

“Do you have a new partner? If so, how has your partner responded?”

Dorval told police Kenol had recently approached her new male friend as he left her apartment and told him: “The Haitian woman who lives here is mine. Don’t touch her.”

Dorval’s complaint to police, made on Oct. 11, had not yet been investigated when she was found dead a week later. Kenol goes to trial April 2.

A Police Ethics Tribunal hearing on the conduct of five officers involved in the case resumes May 6.

The checklist, now in use by most police officers across the province when they respond to conjugal violence calls, was developed by researcher Christine Drouin of the Université de Montréal’s conjugal violence research centre. Drouin spent years analyzing hundreds of conjugal murders, as well as studies on the issue, and came up with a set of factors that are very often present before such murders take place.

“We can’t predict these killings, but we can prevent some of them,” she says.

In a report released last year, Drouin and her team laid out the research and the factors that so many conjugal murders have in common:

Most conjugal murders are committed in the period right before or soon after a rupture in the relationship.

The presence of a new partner often triggers the homicide.

In 70 per cent of conjugal homicide cases, police have already been called to the home because of a conjugal violence complaint.

The risk of homicide goes up if the man has threatened or tried to commit suicide in the past.

Men who murder their partners or ex-partners are likely to be jealous or possessive; they see the women as extensions of themselves.

Back in 2008, Drouin used these and other indicators to devise a two-page checklist of questions that police officers can use when they are taking a report from a conjugal violence victim.

The checklist was being gradually phased into use in Montreal when Dorval was killed in 2010. In the months following, the Montreal police department accelerated implementation of the tool, and it is now used for every conjugal violence complaint.

There has been no formal analysis yet on the checklist’s impact on conjugal homicide rates, but Commander Vincent Richer, the Montreal police department’s spokesperson on conjugal and family violence, said it is definitely helping.

“The level of details included in our reports has clearly improved. The officers are asking better targeted questions, so it helps the investigators do their jobs more effectively. It helps the Crown, too,” when these cases go to court, he said.

If the results of the checklist indicate a suspect is considered a high risk for homicide and he is present when the complaint is made, he will be arrested immediately. If the checklist indicates he is at risk to commit homicide but he is not present, “the officers will go to greater effort to find and arrest him,” Richer said.

Since Montreal police receive about 15,000 conjugal violence complaints on average per year, the tool ostensibly keeps officers from overlooking the most risky cases, like Dorval’s.

“The evaluation of risk is complicated due to the sheer amplitude of the phenomenon,” Richer said.

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