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Victim Services Unit, Vancouver Police Department

Interview with Carol McClenahan, Director

The following interview was conducted by BCIFV Newsletter Editor, Barbara Sherman in January 1995.

Obviously the Police Victim Services Unit attends to many stressful situations. Please tell me how many victim service personnel are paid and how many are voluntary? Also, what type of training do they receive and what is the average length of time someone would volunteer with this program?

At this point we have a paid full-time staff of four. The great majority of the service work is done by volunteers. At this point we have about 155 volunteers because we run our mobile services 24 hours a day, every day of the year. You have to have that many in a pool to make sure you can cover everything. We can't tell them, you must be here at midnight next Tuesday. They collect their own shift. We ask them to stay on for a year, and on average they stay a year. We have some people here who have been here ten years, but not many, and they have to distance themselves from it. After they have put in a year, we tell them that they can reduce their commitment from once a week to once a month.

Once a week for how many hours, usually?

Six, but it could be as many as twelve, because there are times that you just can't leave people. You've built up a rapport, and for some people to go back and start again would be too stressful.

Are most of the volunteers police officers?

No, there are some aspiring police officers. There are people who are looking for a career change and looking to go into social work. We get criminology practicum students here as well. The majority though, I think, just use the volunteer work as a way to enhance their lives. They may have a career that is very structured or is the kind of occupation where there is not a lot of people contact, and so this is a way for them to not change careers but to broaden that base into more people-service.

Can you outline some of the policies and procedures that are followed by victim service personnel. What percentage of calls attend at a crime scene?

The majority of our mobile services staff attend crime scenes. Maybe they wouldn't go today, but the next time they're on duty they'll get called. The policies and procedures are massive. We have an entire manual and each procedure would depend on what type of circumstance it is.

In a domestic violence situation the procedures are somewhat different in that there is some potential danger for people, so we work procedures to minimize any danger to them from an alleged offender.

How long would you have somebody starting with the program before you would have them attend a scene?

In order work mobile, they have to go through all four days of our training. They have to pass a test which we give at the end and that is to our satisfaction, so you know if they are grasping the important points. Even though there may be only two things wrong we still go after them and do more work with them on an individual basis if we think it's workable. If the person doesn't get this at all, then we simply tell them that part of the deal of membership here is that you have to be able to pass that test. It is a very practical test, not something that you need to memorize a tremendous amount of data, but you do have to be paying attention and absorb the materials in four days.

After that they go out with very experienced people for at least two times, who show them everything. They also use the police radio, so they need to practice on that and they need to make sure that they know how to do that. After five or six times on average, they then pick someone to go out with regularly who has done more service. On the odd shift you have somebody working with someone out of their own class but not very often. They don't prefer to do that. You know, if you and I were in the same class I think we'd feel better working with someone who had done it a few more times.

When somebody wants to volunteer, do they need a special background? Do you try to choose people that have a combination of education or training and/or come from a special ethnic group?

No. What we are really looking for is people who are good communicators, who, during the interview, which is a nervous time for most people, can still be warm and very expressive of what they saying, because this work is stressful. If they are going to be unable to speak well, for example, at an interview, I don't know how well they would really do out there, dealing with trauma.

What we do is ask people to bring us three current dated letters of reference and a resume before they even get an interview with us, so already there is a kind of screening process going on. We do reference checks and that kind of thing.

If somebody is attending a domestic violence dispute between a husband and wife, and there are children there and maybe the mother has to either go to the hospital or else be attended in some way, but the children also have to be looked after, is there a procedure that they would talk to the woman and find out what she wants first?.

That's right. And there have been times that we have taken the children to the hospital. I can remember one instance when she was a nursing mom, and she had three little children and a baby with her, and that was her wish, that the children be brought down to the Vancouver Hospital with her. We very often have children in our office here as well.

Would you transport them to a transition house or to relatives if that is what she wants?

Yes, as long as it's deemed a safe place to go. You have to be a bit careful with that. You know, if she says, 'that's my relative over there' and it turns out it's some girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever and you're really not delivering the children to where they should be going or to a safe place. The police help to make the assessment.

But as much as possible, in every instance, we try to empower the person we're dealing with, whether it is a victim of crime or other trauma, to begin to make some decisions for themselves; even to the point of asking, 'May I call you Mary, may I sit down, may I have a glass of water.' The person has to start on that decision-making process; because that helps them. Because that is the goal - not to rescue, but to help them to make some good decisions. If they ask us to do something we just positively cannot do, then we are agents of reality in saying "No, we can't, but let's look at some other things we can do." Generally we come to some pretty good decisions.

What type of information is needed to make a charge? Also, how does the victim service person know when they're hearing something that the police should be hearing and how do they take notes and keep records of something that might, in fact, have to go before the courts.

If they begin to hear, and this is part of the training, if they hear anything that sounds like it is case information or case-progress information or the victim says she had just remembered something, we call the (police) car back if they're not there.

People's memory comes back in stages, and it may not when they are initially shocked, and as time passes it begins to come back, so we just get the same car to come back and take the information. We don't take their statements at all.

As to what type of information is needed for the officers to make a charge, the rule for them is that they have to on the basis of their information and belief, believe that it happened and that so-and-so did it, in order to lay a charge.

That's the whole thing about the violence against women in relationships policy. The charge is based on the officer's information and belief; and it is not the old model where people try to negotiate a settlement or have the couple sit down and mediate some type of truce, or tell the other to take a walk around the block, or go stay at a friend's house and come back the next day. In other words, they are to treat that type of violence, which is not just assault, it could be breaking and entering, wilful damage, threats, stalking, as if it is no relationship at all.

Do victim service personnel have to testify in court?

If they witness something, yes. There have been instances, not many, but there have been instances where somebody has assaulted somebody or threatened somebody. In spousal violence, lots of times by the time the police get there the alleged offender will have taken off, but the alleged offender also will then come back at some point and sometimes it's while the police are still there and so the shouts and threats start and all that. Of course, if the police see that it is an instant charge, because they have seen it and certainly the best of information to believe when you've seen it. But if our people were there they would have to go. As well, in driving around, the same with our Citizens Crime Watch Program. If you witness something, you're just a citizen like anybody else.

What type of debriefing procedures are necessary and what type of counselling is available for those working in this area?

During training we teach them to do their own debriefing and feedback. If they get involved in anything that is serious, we go through that with them on kind of a second level. If they get involved in anything that is really stressful they are entitled to go to the Critical Incident Stress Team that the police use here. And if necessary we would certainly go to bat for getting them the services of psychologists if that was necessary. Obviously, if they are a victim of crime, if they are assaulted while on duty, they are eligible for Criminal Injury Board compensation just like anybody else, although it's never happened.

Are there any improvements you hope to see with your victim services operations in Vancouver?

I would say we could probably use some more people. We are short daytime people a lot of the time.

And how are you equipped for special needs groups requiring language skills and that sort of thing. Is that just equipped through the regular police translation services?

Actually, between 18% and 23% of our people speak a second and some of them three languages. So when they join us, and after training, we ask them if they would mind if we list it on our telephone list, the languages that they speak. And so, if you and I were in the car tonight, mobile, and we realized that the crime victims can functionally speak English about the things in their shop but can't really talk other than that, we could call somebody who speaks, say, Cantonese and put them on the phone with our person and they would tell us what they want done.

They come in handy too for officers who call on the police radio and say "Does anybody out there speak Punjabi" and sometimes we're lucky and we have someone in a car who speaks it. And of course we do have access to 911 now, and it is multilingual in that they can push a button for a translation service.

That's a good thing to have.

Yes, it's very good for people to know about. The other thing is, the minute you pick up the phone and dial 911 they know where you are calling from, so if all you can do is pick it up and manage to get that in there, already the call is registered. I think a lot of people are very fearful they won't be able to communicate, so they won't call.

There are a lot of services within this area that we're talking about that are obviously time-consuming, especially when you're an agency that's an advocate, to get all the housing needs straightened out and monetary needs and the emotional needs and the medical needs and children changing schools. It's unbelievable. It's amazing, really, when you think about it, how anybody really extracts themselves from some of these situations.

It's just everything you've got to change, and even then there's no guarantee that he's not going to get back.

Well you have the threats and then you also have the poverty. It's almost instant, isn't it?

Yes, almost instant with everybody. And even when the family has some money, it's still half a loaf of bread vs a whole one, and that's pretty hard too.

Yes, especially when you feel guilty about dragging your children into that. But I guess that's where this whole issue of children witnessing violence, and its effects on the children too, I think helps people to make decisions.

Yes, a lot of people are so troubled that they really think the kids don't know. There is an interesting program at Multicultural Family Support Services. They run groups for children who have witnessed violence.

Right, and I think a lot of transition houses are doing it.

I think it will give the children a vehicle to talk about it. Even if they haven't seen it, they have certainly heard it, from their rooms or whatever, and most of them have probably seen it too. And that is just the criminal part of it. But then there is all the emotional abuse on top of that which isn't against the law, but they hear that too.

And a lot of these people are abusive to the children as well. It doesn't just stop with abuse to the spouse or partner.

One last question. When a Victim Service Worker goes to a scene, do they have a list of contact names and numbers for the woman, do they inform her of the available choices , and do they leave their number for the woman to call again if she needs to?

Yes, they give her our service card, on which they put their first name and the number is already printed on it. I've asked them to write on that card the name of the agency they feel the person should go to, so if it's a person who speaks English well, then it would be Battered Women's Support Services, if not, it would be Multicultural Family Services. And we always say, if this doesn't work out for whatever reason call us back, there's more agencies, for fear that they are maybe going to go back or maybe someone sounded awful on the phone when they called and they're going to think they're abandoned, and they're not, there's always other options.

Our role is to be an agent of reality and to try to get the person to a safe place.