And what really bothered me is they all lacked the experience to LISTEN and HEAR the story rather than just focusing on the words & whether they fit a statutory definition. I think more experienced LE would have treated BL with MUCH more suspicion and would have been more likely to at least get the actual story.
Which, IMO, is about his anger at her working, fighting over the keys as he wanted to control the vehicle & exclude her from it, his chasing HER down the street as the witness stated, none of that suggests SHE was the "aggressor" in the legal sense. He had no right to exclude her from the vehicle and leave her behind. Even given their "shared" use-that's what it was "shared" not HIS use. Yet LE on scene assumed it was HIS as they asked him if he was OK with her having the van. They never considered his trying to exclude her & leave her behind was any kind of a problem!
I can't really blame the officers as they were all doing their job, and not in a cavalier way, as they saw it. They took plenty of time yet still missed important details. Like it makes no sense the aggressor is a crying mess and the victim just gets happier and happier, joking, laughing etc as it becomes clear he's duped them. Like many have said it is all too common for abused women to minimize, take responsibility, protect the abuser. It's too bad none of them seemed to know that or see that in the situation.
But nothing they would have been able to do would have really changed anything unless it was an intervention to get them to separate permanently and that's just not reasonable to expect of LE.
