A little shame can go a long way
During the last budget season, there was some talk among locals about the need to get rid of the police department. And if you’ve ever wondered why Stafford doesn’t just get rid of the diminutive department and rely on resident troopers, I think there’s a simple, if unofficial, answer: domestic violence.
Yep, Stafford’s got a problem with abusers. Each year, State Trooper Sergeant Kyle Cormier visits a Board of Selectmen (BOS) meeting and reports on the department’s stats. So I went back to the recording of the January BOS meeting. He told the board that there were 470 reportable incidents the department responded to. Though it’s hard to hear whether he says, 16 or 60 of those were domestic violence calls. When Selectman Anthony Armelin asked a follow up question about how Stafford stacks up in comparison to other towns, Sgt. Cormier confirms that Stafford’s rate of domestic violence is much higher than surrounding towns. He also noted multiple times that local constables handle 78% of calls in town.
According to the Crime in Connecticut 2025 Domestic and Family Violence Report, “The distribution of offenses remained consistent with long-term historical trends, dominated by Breach of Peace, Assault, and Court Order Violation offenses.” Also, “Several lower-frequency but high-impact offenses, including homicide, stalking, strangulation, kidnapping, and risk of injury, increased year over year.”
Over at ctbeyond2020.org, you can see how Stafford’s arrest break down from year to year:
On an anecdotal level, this is all, unfortunately, easy to believe. People tell me things, and I’d be lying if I said there aren’t a few men in town who I expect to see in the police blotter someday. Luckily, their wives seem to have moved on to greener pastures. Still, there are clearly other women, and probably children, out there currently living with their abusers. And we’re all paying the price for men who can’t control their anger in the form of a police department because no one wants to be the reason someone gets beaten half to death—or worse—waiting for a resident trooper to respond. Meanwhile, we’ve also got people questioning the need for family services in Stafford during budget debates, even though ramping up those services might be just the prevention measure Stafford needs.
Thinking about all of this reminded me of a book my husband read: “See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Abuse” by Jess Hill. I think about a story from this book quite often. Back in 2012, the powers that be in High Point, North Carolina rounded up 12 men—known abusers—and sat them down for a meeting. What followed was extraordinary. The community called these men out. Told them they were there because of their record of domestic violence, and that, importantly, their wives had nothing to do with this. Led by a local reverend, and backed by law enforcement, the meeting not only shamed these men, they threatened them. The local FBI, ATF, and police chief all got in on the action.
According to the book, Jim Fealy, the local police chief, got up and said, “As the chief of police, I’ve declared domestic violence our number one public safety threat.” The town was reportedly spending 6,000 hours a year on domestic violence calls—which tend to be incredibly dangerous for anyone responding to the calls. He admitted that they had not done a good job addressing the issue, and promised that was about to change.
When the deputy chief got up in front of High Point’s offenders, he said: “My officers, my detectives, will do anything in their power to make a case. If we have information that you’re abusing your spouse and we don’t have a misdemeanor case, we may buy dope from you, we might sell you a handgun, we might reinvestigate a case that was dismissed before and get it reinstated.”
You can’t imagine my glee at hearing this for the first time, or, again, recently, when I asked my husband to find the book so I could write this editorial.
Decent men standing up to bad men, especially in the defense of women, is all too rare. We’ve seen that playing out in the headlines—again. Instead of men worrying about the “bright futures” of predators, here we have an example of men realizing what happens when you let bad behavior go unchecked and then applying the same treatment Al Capone got. We can’t get you for the violence, then we’ll get you for tax evasion or whatever case we can make. (You can read more about this initiative here.)
The idea came from a researcher who employed “focused deterrence” to help solve gang violence. Deterrence isn’t something the American legal system focuses much on. In a country that employs for-profit prisons, the incentive isn’t to keep people from committing crimes in the first place—it’s to punish them once they do (and please your political donors while helping big companies increase their profits through slave wages).
The truth is, that’s expensive. Most developed nations understand that crime prevention—through social programs—is cheaper than imprisoning millions of people indefinitely. And, paradoxically, mass incarceration does not make us safer. While there are plenty of bleeding heart reasons to invest in prevention instead of incarceration, it’s also just the more budget-friendly option. We may not be paying directly to incarcerate people in Stafford, but we do pay at a state and federal level, and, here at home, we seem to be paying for a police department to help deal with a handful of domestic abusers.
So, the next time we’re fighting about ways to bring down the budget and the usual suspects start calling for defunding the police for different reasons than we usually hear, perhaps it’s time to start talking about outside the box solutions. Creating a town where we could truly talk about changing the way we approach police coverage without endangering some of our most vulnerable neighbors will take inspired leadership and an investment of resources.
