Clinton commissioners: Domestic violence prevention program works
By SCOTT JOHNSON - sjohnson@lockhaven.comArticle Photos
The commissioners on Thursday unanimously agreed to make a $9,662 local match toward the federal Violence Against Women Act grant, which will total nearly $60,000 this year.
Half of the funding will go to the Clinton County Women’s Center. The other half will be split evenly by the District Attorney’s Office and Lock Haven Police Department.
County VAWA Coordinator Miles Houseknecht said the programs funded by the grant have helped to dramatically decrease the number of domestic violence incidents over the last decade.
When the county first participated in the program in 1996, there were about 400 cases of domestic violence that year, Houseknecht said. That number has steadily decreased to about 120 per year, with many years with no felony violations, he said.
In addition, Houseknecht reported there was a domestic violence murder in the county every year for 10 years before instituting the program, and only three since 1996.
“It has been extremely effective in that aspect,” Houseknecht said.
Most of the funding will go toward police training and equipment.
“The police have received training that they would have never dreamed of having and equipment they would have never received in their hands,” he said, noting the city’s police department received a $12,000 ultraviolet light to help find stains in sexual violence cases.
“I used it along with (Lock Haven) Detective Charles Shoemaker and we found what looked like a pin-prick in a deep shag carpet,” Houseknecht said. “It was invisible to the human eye, but the young lady told us one of the assaults took place over by the television set by the floor and there was this tiny little speck glowing back at us. We cut that piece of carpet off and it matched his DNA.”
He said the expected federal funding will go toward a domestic violence seminar on April 28-30 at the Hampton Inn near Lamar. Police officials, along with representatives from the county’s Children and Youth Services and Probation departments have been invited to attend.
Cindy Love, executive director of the Clinton County Women’s Center, said that organization’s funding, all of which will come from the federal portion of the grant, will also go toward paying for an attorney for PFA cases along with partial salaries of a legal advocate and three counselors.
Deb Zinck, contract coordinator for the Women’s Center, said without the VAWA funding, many victims of domestic violence would not have the financial or emotional support to receive Protection From Abuse orders.
In a related topic, Houseknecht said he is also going to apply for a $300,000 federal anti-gang grant.
If approved, $124,000 would go toward a new surveillance and alarm system at Bucktail Area High School. The other funding would go toward 40 new bullet-proof vests for county police officers and computer thumb drives that would allow police departments to have complete blueprints for every school.
“That way if there were a hostage situation or a gun situation in one of those facilities, the police could use one of those thumb drives, punch it into their computer and they can actually study the entire layout of the structure before they arrive,” he said.
