Was it the tall bearded officer who followed up with this witness who “was not entirely sure what he had seen, but feared the worst?”
I ask because I’d be concerned that this particular officer, whose arrival at the scene IMO totally shifted the dynamic at the scene to align with his own bias, may have influenced this witness just as he worked at influencing GP (telling her she played a role in worsening things by “spiraling” BL’s anxiety) and the officer who had arrived at the scene initially (when he pulled that officer aside to summarize that they were required to identify either GP or BL as perpetrator and that they should choose GP as such based on GP’s and BL’s statements on scene and visible marks on BL, but COMPLETELY ignoring (1) the witness’s call to 911 reporting BL hitting and chasing GP, (2) BL’s speeding and temporarily evading the officer chasing him as he drove, and (3) the obvious size and strength - POWER - differential between the two.
It is notable that the original officer at the scene, when calling to arrange a hotel room for BL (as the decided “victim”) for the night, asked the person he was calling whether it would be possible to arrange that room for GP instead, even though she was the one who’d be cited for DV. He was apparently told that wouldn’t be possible; however, that he asked seems to me to indicate this officer is not sold on the idea that GP was the primary abuser. He may have considered her actions reactive to BL’s.
It is also notable the female officer (ranger) does not appear at the scene to be in concurrence with the conclusion of the other officers. And reports since indicate she was advising GP to recognize she was being mistreated, deserved better, and should get help removing herself from the relationship.
I think tall bearded cop pushed his own agenda on everyone at that scene, thus enabling BL, dismissing GP and potentially contributing to her continued codependency, and completely bypassing his fellow officers’ own intuitions and conclusions. At no time after he stated how he saw things did he ask that fellow officer what he thought. He didn’t want to know.
ETA: On occasions such as this where there is not clarity, there ought to be options besides required citation of one party, including temporary citation and sheltering of both of the persons involved, with social worker counseling outside of the immediate crisis to discern the reality of the relationship dynamics.
It makes me sick to think about how both GP and BL left that encounter, him emboldened and her weakened. And when I consider that she was both living with BL in his parents’ home AND working for them at the juice bar, I think she’d been living with a substantial power differential for a long while.
