women histories, incest sexual abuse. institutionalized. But what if ...

system she turned to for help.
Since the 1991 beating of Rodney King,
several high-profile incidents, such as the
alleged sodomizing and assault of Haitian
Abner Louima, have put police brutality in the
national spotlight. But it is the dozens of
unpublicized, less notorious cases, like the
Matan incident, that fuel the growing grassroots
movement against police misconduct.
From national conferences on police brutality
to anti-brutality marches, community activists
are making this issue a top organizing priority.
Even some Black and Hispanic officers are
beginning to break ranks with their white colleagues
and are calling for the dismissal of
racist cops who brutalize Latinos and African-
Americans.
The June 1994 death of Nicole Brown
Simpson also helped to bring domestic violence
to the forefront of public policy debates. Local
organizing around this issue began in the
early 1990s and later culminated in the
Violence Against Women Act, which Congress
passed as part of the 1994 Crime Law. The Act
stiffened penalties for a number of violent
crimes against women, including rape and assault, and allocated
federal grant money to state and local government
efforts that curb domestic violence through the criminal justice
system. Since passage of the Crime Law, states have passed
tougher domestic violence measures and have reorganized
courts and police departments to better fight this problem.
Absent from each debate, however, is how domestic violence
and police brutality intersect—and sometimes collide—in the
lives of Black women and Latinas.
It is estimated that more than 42,000 women in New
York State (half of those in New York City alone) are abused
each year. The recent changes in state and local domestic violence
laws have put an emphasis on police and court intervention.
But with mounting complaints of police brutality in several
Black and Latina communities, abused women in these
neighborhoods are put in a precarious position. To be protected
from their abusers, they are encouraged to call the cops, but
for women of color this means relying on the same police
department they believe holds their communities in contempt.
"The Black
women
and Latinas
we work with
don't call
the police
because
they are not
always sure
what the
outcome
will be."
"The Black women and Latinas
we work with don't call the police
because they are not always sure what
the outcome will be. They believe they
have to make a choice," says Shirley
Traylor, executive director of Harlem
Legal Services. "They believe if they call
the police or invoke the intervention of
the criminal justice system, the offender
is very likely to be mistreated in
some way. They feel they've exposed the
offender to some larger danger and this
has an impact on their decisions." As
police brutality and domestic violence
are elevated within the grassroots organizing
and public policy arenas, they
threaten to further overshadow battered
women of color caught between
the two movements.
Although they may be more hesitant
to seek police protection,
I Latinas and Black women are at
least as vulnerable to domestic abuse
as white women. The New York City Department of Health
released a report last March which found that between 1990
and 1994 there were 1,156 female homicide victims aged 16
and older. 52 percent of these victims were Black, 29 percent
were Latina, and 16 percent were white.
The Health Department, which conducted the study by
reviewing Medical Examiner's reports, had only cursory information
on the victims' history with domestic violence, and not
every murder was committed by a husband or boyfriend—
some were committed during other disputes or robberies, for
instance—but the report concluded that in murders with
"identified motives, women were victims of intimate partner
homicide more than any other homicide."
The study also reveals that strategies for addressing
the problem of violence against women need to be different
from those aimed at homicides committed against men, which
the Health Department carefully noted. Furthermore, the
report implies that strategies for addressing violence against
women of color need to be different from those which target the
43 " on the issues