I’m curious. Did you ever call and report the domestic violence happening next door to you?
The worst part of that night was that my neighbor had a 10 year-old girl from another marriage. I looked for her everywhere (yes, my footprints and fingerprints were all over the place) and when I couldn't find her, I knocked at the door of the next apartment. The lady was scared and would not open, just asked me what did I want, and I blurted out "Wanda is dead, Ralph has killed her and I cannot find Brooke" and I heard a scream. The little girl had ran to this other neighbor's apartment and was hiding there, in fear! What a way to find out! I'll never ever forget it!
Once, I was working the complaint desk and a woman called and said that a man was beating a woman in the duplex next door. She said to hurry, "he's hurting her." This was before the domestic violence laws were enacted. I could have entered the call as a battery. That would have classified it as a misdemeanor and the dispatcher could have held the call for 20 minutes before dispatching it. Or I could have entered it as an ADW - Assault With a Deadly Weapon, which would have prioritized it and the dispatcher would then have 3 minutes to dispatch it. I had no information that a weapon was being used, all I had was the words "he's hurting her."
I entered it as an ADW and the dispatcher immediately put it out. As it was, one of our detectives was close by and he rolled to assist on the call. He went to the door and stepped in, and the suspect ran out the back. It turned out that there had been a rape in the area earlier in the day, and the suspect was at the duplex trying to rape another woman. If I had put the call in as a misdemeanor he would have succeeded.