http://www.startribune.com/local/north/ ... :_Yyc:aUUX
Could tougher laws have saved Pam Taschuk?
A St. Paul police program will prioritize offenders by how dangerous they are.
By ABBY SIMONS, Star Tribune
Last update: October 4, 2009 - 7:13 AM
Pam Taschuk might be alive today if a novel program to stop violent domestic abusers, now in development in St. Paul, was already in place statewide.
The program, called the Blueprint, will be implemented by St. Paul police next year and is likely to be recommended for statewide use thereafter. A key component is police assessment of potential lethality of offenders, Cmdr. Steven Frazer, head of the Family and Sexual Violence Unit at the St. Paul Police Department, said Saturday.
The Blueprint is "cutting-edge and the first of its kind nationwide," Frazer said, adding that next year, the U.S. Department of Justice will begin using it as a nationwide model.
If the program had been applied to Taschuk's estranged husband, Allen, he might still be behind bars, unable to pay a higher bail set after authorities determined just how potentially dangerous he was to his wife of 22 years, whom he beat, imprisoned and threatened to kill on several occasions.
Instead, Pam Taschuk, 48, a longtime juvenile probation officer and social worker, was fatally shot Thursday night in their Lino Lakes home. Authorities say she had done everything right, seizing almost every resource available to battered women, but still wound up dead at the hands of her 51-year-old husband just a month after he posted $5,000 bail for his release from jail.
Frazer stopped short of saying whether the St. Paul plan could have saved Pam Taschuk's life, but said that if it were implemented, an abuser like Allen Taschuk would not be easily released from jail on bail based on his history as a convicted abuser.
"There was an awful lot of foreshadowing in this case," Frazer said. "Now, how does everyone else put that foreshadowing, as tragic as it is, to good use and good meaning to avert these tragedies? By all accounts, [Pam Taschuk] had the tools, and the knowledge, and the understanding, and still, here we are, writing a story that ends awful."
Since 2000, more than 200 Minnesota women have died as the result of domestic violence. And Taschuk's death came on the heels of another high-profile slaying, the Labor Day killing of North St. Paul police officer Richard Crittenden by a man who'd twice violated his protection order.
The Blueprint was crafted by police and Praxis International, a nonprofit group that works against domestic violence. Its assessment of offenders' potential lethality through questions asked by police at the scene -- such as whether a suspect has threatened to kill the victim or himself -- responds to at least some of the needs cited by advocates for battered women.
Connie Moore, executive director of Alexandra House, the Blaine battered-women's shelter where Pam Taschuk had sought support, said the Blueprint could be one of several ways to end the often fatal attacks on women who try to escape abusive relationships.
"That's a really important piece. If you can assess a perpetrator, and if this person is more likely to kill somebody, what can we put in place to prevent that?" she said.
Moore also would like to see a domestic-abuse registry through which abusers are monitored similar to the way sex offenders are monitored in most states. It's a somewhat simple solution, she said, and one that could garner attention if domestic abuse were taken more seriously.
"We can try and do everything possible, change things and do the best job we can, and sometimes somebody's going to do what he did. It's just gonna happen," said Moore. "But still, what can we do differently?"
Major attitude shift sought
Rebecca McLane, the program manager for the St. Paul Domestic Abuse Intervention Project, said addressing important issues that could save women's lives requires a shift in society's attitudes. Part of that, she said, would involve prioritizing.
"If we could have anything in the world that we wanted, it would be more shelters, more advocates, more cops on the streets, and more close monitoring of these dangerous offenders," said McLane, who added that the metro's dozen battered-women's shelters are nearly always full.
Wiggle room in laws
"I can't name a particular law that should be made, but there's a lot of wiggle room with our existing laws that could be tightened."
That's exactly the point of the Blueprint, Frazer said.
Though bail is typically set based on whether the defendant is a flight risk, it should be viewed differently when it comes to domestic abusers, many of whom have homes and jobs and can be relied upon to return to court. But they can't be relied upon not to harm their victims again.
"In the really lethal cases, our arrest or prosecution of them is not a deterrent to stopping their stalking or battery. It does deter them when they're locked up," Frazer said. "We're not making an argument on whether he's coming back to court next week. We're making an argument on whether he's a threat to the people he's been in contact with that warrants some other level of review."
According to most recent statistics, Frazer said, 54 percent of women killed in domestic situations had told police they believed they were going to be killed, essentially providing a preview of 54 percent of homicide suspects, Frazer said, and proving that fighting domestic violence is essentially saving lives.
"These are cases where people are dying every day," Frazer said. "That's something, in this age, where there's no excuse for not making whatever conscious efforts we can to make it better."
Abby Simons • 612-673-4921
