February 8, 2024 • 21 mins
The nuisance law in Independence, Missouri played a pivotal role in Libby's story. In this bonus episode, hear Melissa's extended conversation with Sandra Park, former ACLU lawyer and current head of the Civil Rights Bureau of the NY State Attorney General’s Office, as they discuss what nuisance laws are, how they're often misused and what's being done about them.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi listeners. In this bonus episode of What Happened to
Libby Caswell, I want to spend some time talking about
nuisance laws, what they are, how they're used, and what's
being done about them. The nuisance law in Independence, Missouri
played a pivotal role in Libby's story. You may remember
from episode three that Cindy's house was labeled a nuisance
(00:25):
after she repeatedly called nine one one to report Devon's
ongoing harassment.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I always thought nuisance was the person that didn't clean
up the trash, or mowed or grass, or had loud
late night parties. I didn't think it pertained to hey,
help us here, help us, this kid is egging our house.
These you know, threatening us.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
The logic of this that they were being punished for
Devon's threatening behavior confused and angered at Cindy.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yes, it was a nuisance. It was a very big nuisance.
It was to us too, you know, we were struggling
to keep our daughters safe and our other two kids
and trying to hold down jobs, you know, at the
same time.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
I first heard about nuisance laws in twenty seventeen, when
I was a reporter for the Huffington Post. I covered
a story where a woman was evicted from her home
and ultimately exiled from her hometown of Maplewood, Missouri, for
calling to report domestic violence on multiple occasions. At the time,
(01:31):
I interviewed Saundra Park, who was then a lawyer with
the ACLU. They brought a lawsuit against Maplewood, arguing that
their nuisance law was unconstitutional. As a result, the town
was forced to amend its nuisance ordinance so that domestic
violence victims could no longer be penalized for calling the police.
(01:53):
Sondra Park is now the head of the Civil Rights
Bureau of the New York State Attorney General's Office. Read
out to her recently to talk about the nuisance ordinance
in Independence and its effect on Libby's tragic story. Here's
our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity.
(02:15):
I think most people don't even know about nuisance laws
or nuisance ordinances, so it would be great just to
hear from you a little bit of a backstory of
when and where they originated and for what purpose.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
So nuisance laws exist around the country. There have been
different types of laws like this on the books for decades.
They became much more popular in the nineties as a
result of tough on crime type attitudes, where people started
penalizing minor offenses as a way of possibly getting at
(02:49):
bigger offenses, so almost like a broken windows theory. Typically,
when you see justifications of these laws, there's a simplistic
idea that somehow, once you start penalized owners for police
calls or for possible criminal activity occurring at the home,
that somehow the landlord or the owner can stop that
from occurring. And I think that's just a completely misplaced
(03:14):
idea about what the relationship between crime and the home is,
particularly if you think about the domestic violence context. Domestic violence,
by its nature is usually committed at the home, and
so once you have a law that is targeting the
fact that there's a nine to one one call or
that there's a crime occurring at the home, you are
(03:35):
going to punish the victim of the domestic violence. I
think survivors in that situation quickly learn that reaching out
for police assistance will not provide any sort of safety
or security to them.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
What are the justifications for these types of policies and
what specific offenses are they looking to crack down on.
It seems like sometimes it's about noise or like track
or other stuff like that. But what typically when policymakers
have pushed these policies, like, what are they saying to
justify why they might be helpful.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
So early on, there were a lot of ordnances that
were more general to physical conditions at the home, like
things like trash or dead trees. Those are not the
types of ornances that I've been concerned about or you know,
had been advocating against. What we saw was a broadening
of the scope of these ordnances over time, particularly in
(04:30):
this nineties period that I mentioned earlier, where you saw
things like drug offenses potentially being targeted. You saw violence
being targeted without any consideration of who was committing the violence,
whether the person was actually the victim of the violence.
Just the fact that violence had occurred at the home
was going to make that property a target for nuisance enforcement.
(04:52):
And then we also saw that rather than specifying offenses,
a lot of cities took a very broad approach to
these ordinances where they would say, any violation of federal
state city law can trigger this nuisance ordinance, and it
could be as minor as a violation, so something very
(05:13):
low level as an offense, and that is actually, I
think very typical of the way these laws operate. Now,
the other types of justifications in the domestic violence context
in particular, is we've seen victim blaming explicitly in some
of the consideration of these types of laws. So you'll
see discussion of the fact that there are repeated domestic
(05:34):
violence calls, that that's a problem for the city and
they want that to stop, and rather than actually trying
to address the underlying issues of domestic violence in the home,
they want to crack down on the fact that there
are repeated calls, and so they are taking an extremely
punitive approach by punishing the folks who are generating those calls.
(05:57):
I think that the other really flaws philosophy behind this
type of ordinance is that somehow, if you reduce the
number of police calls, that equates to reducing crime, and
we know that's just completely a huge mistake. If anything,
you are allowing crime to continue to occur and violence
(06:18):
to escalate because people no longer feel that they can
reach out for emergency assistance.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Do we have any research or understanding about how these
might be unequally enforced.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Yeah, we've done that analysis and specific communities in different ways,
and we've seen that they disproportionately get enforced when the
calls are about domestic violence. We definitely have seen in
the nuisance ordinance context where they seem to be disproportionately
targeting people of color, people with disabilities, as well as
(06:53):
households dealing with domestic violence.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
So do you think it was intentional for domestic violence
to be considered a type of nuisance or was this
just a byproduct of the laws.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
When I first started working on this issue, I maybe
naively thought it was more of a byproduct situation, And
you know, the evidence really shows that it is very
explicit victim blaming in a lot of communities. I'm not
going to say every community, but we have seen in
some communities they specifically target domestic violence as a nuisance offense,
(07:31):
or they specifically talk about domestic violence as a type
of offense they want to target in adopting this type
of ordinance.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
If you've listened to the entire podcast, and I recommend
you do before going any further, you know that the
Independence Police Department used a local nuisance ordinance to pressure
Cindy to stop calling them despite Devon's ongoing harassment. When
I first read how the police described their interactions with
Libby and their reports, I was horrified. For example, here's
(08:37):
one incident on August twelfth, twenty thirteen, Cindy called nine
one one to report Devon swinging a hammer outside her house.
By the time police arrived, he was nowhere to be found.
The responding police officer wrote in his report that quote,
Dispatch advised that IPD had responded to the address five
(08:58):
times in August twenty thirty for disturbances and building checks,
all pertaining to Devin. Each time IPD has responded, Elizabeth
has been very uncooperative end quote. This was the moment
IPD decided to cite Cindy and Libby for maintaining a
nuisance property, and it would have ripple effects for months
(09:21):
and years to come. I showed the reports to Sondra
Park to get her expert interpretation.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
It struck me that there was no discussion of referrals
for services. That they seemed focused on the fact that
the alleged victim was very uncooperative, rather than you know,
thinking about how they could better work with her, better
talk with her, and you know that that is the
kind of language we see where police are turning towards
(09:51):
blaming the victim rather than thinking about ways of supporting
the victim. This is a very stark situation of that,
because when the officer notes her as being uncooperative, that's
the very same instance where they then turn around and
serve her parents with maintaining any nuisance residence. So it's
very clear that they believe that this family is causing
(10:16):
a nuisance rather than being deserving of support. Law enforcement
is clearly aware that it's a domestic situation. You know,
they're labeling some of these calls domestic disturbance, and that
is often the way police departments code these types of calls,
which I think raises another question, you know, whether the
disturbance language frames these situations more in a nuisance type
(10:40):
situation right, versus calling it like I don't know, some
other terminology where we would recognize the dynamics and domestic
violence or abuse happening.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
So we've gone from the summer to the next January.
She calls the police again, and just just the language
here of the police. Both Caswell women that police were
not going to make continual calls to the residents and
it would be treated at a disorderly house and parties
could be arrested on future calls. After a stern warning
(11:13):
and conversation, I elected not to arrest Livy Casa. I thought, like, wow,
she was actually being threatened with arrest in that case.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yeah, I mean that really was horrifying to see. I
think the timeline you're thinking through is very similar to
what I've seen in other situations, where once the family
understands that future calls will lead to enforcement, they stop calling. Typically,
they may make calls again in the future only when
(11:45):
they feel they really have no other choice, or when
the violence has escalated to a point that they don't
see any other way of addressing it. So it's not
surprising to me that there might have been a gap.
I think the law is set up to punish families
in this situation, and then we see in stark terms
(12:05):
that the police are enforcing or understanding the law to
do that by stating that continual calls could lead to
the arrest of the people who are making the calls,
even though they themselves are not alleged to have committed
any criminal activity. For me, I mean, this issue has
always been so disturbing because I really think it's writing
(12:27):
into law blaming the victim, because the victim can then
be arrested for having made these requests for police protection.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
So, in your work specifically with domestic violence and these laws,
can you talk a little bit about how these nuisance
laws affect victims of domestic violence and the different ways
that it affects them in terms of housing, financially, safety.
I know that they probably have a cascading amount of effects,
(13:01):
but I'd love to hear it just what you've seen firsthand.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
I've worked with many survivors who have been targeted under
these laws over the years. I think one thing to
note is for many survivors, the decision to call the
police is a very heavy one, and they often will
have experienced violence for some period of time, often lengthy
periods of time, before they make that first nine to
(13:25):
one one call. I'm thinking of one survivor I worked
with who experienced domestic abuse for seven years before she
made her first nine to one one call. And when
she made that call, it was in a city where
there was a nuisance ordinance. That first call triggered enforcement
against her home. First, she learns that actually calling nine
(13:47):
one one, and seeking protection will mean that she loses
a home for her and her kids. Second, she learns
that law enforcement, which is often understood by most of
society as where survivors are supposed to go to seek protection,
that instead of providing safety, they will threaten your housing
(14:09):
and possibly impose other types of financial and criminal consequences
because your call for help is considered a nuisance under
the local law. I think what's most difficult for survivors
in the situation is that as a society, we generally
have sent the message that people who are experiencing domestic
(14:30):
violence should call the police and should seek protection, and survivors,
when they then do that, to learn that they are
going to be punished in this way really undoes any
sense of there being a foundation of security or safety
that they could turn to. And I think they really
(14:53):
then learn that they are very much on their own,
which they might have thought even before this. And so
if you imagine a person in that situation who suffered
for many years, the message that sends is devastating.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Can you talk a little bit about the legal concerns
with these laws and how you might have challenged them
in the past.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Sure, so, I've worked on several lawsuits challenging these laws
around the country because these laws, the way they operate
is to punish people once they make the call to
the police. We think that's a very clear violation of
people's First Amendment rights, which includes the right to contact
law enforcement and to request assistance. And we now have
(15:38):
decisions from various courts recognizing that when these laws operate
to punish people for their nine to one one calls,
that is considered a violation of their First Amendment rights.
We've also challenged these laws on due process grounds because
usually there really is no process for someone to contest
(16:00):
whether they should be punished under these laws. There's no hearing,
there's no opportunity for the family to talk about why
they shouldn't be punished. It's just an automatic assumption that
if you violate the law, you will get whatever the
penalty is. And then we've also challenged these laws on
the grounds that they discriminate against women. We know that
(16:24):
in many communities, domestic violence is the biggest category of
police calls. So once you start enforcing based on calls
to police, you are harming domestic violence survivors, the majority
of whom are women. What we've seen is as a
result of our cases, the cities have appealed the laws
and pay damages to our clients. We've also used the
(16:46):
lawsuits to spur on state legislation as well as we
now have a new federal production and the Violence Against
Women Act.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
So it sounds like the lawsuits that you have worked on,
when they've been successful, have resulted in these ordinances being repealed.
Are we seeing like a move towards getting rid of
these ordinances? Are really only the ones that you've brought
a hammer down on have actually made any change.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
It's varied. A lot of times, our lawsuits have helped
support state legislation which prohibits local laws that punish residents
for seeking emergency assistance. It's an ongoing project because you know,
we're talking locality by locality, and so that's why we've
taken these approaches of trying to focus on state and
(17:33):
federal level protections. We have seen cities repealing or amending
their ordinances, but you know, it's a continuing conversation about
educating folks that these ordinances exist. At the federal level,
the latest Violence Against Women Act includes a protection that
applies to cities that receive federal funding through the Community
(17:58):
Development Block Grant program, which is a pretty widespread program,
and basically it creates protection from being penalized under ordinances
for seeking emergency assistance or for criminal activity of which
you were not at fault. It might not address every situation,
but the way penalty is described is that you should
(18:18):
not be penalized by being evicted, by not having your
lease renewed, or by other types of fines and fees
or criminal consequences.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
I know we've discussed this, but just sort of just
big picture, what kind of message it sends to victims
to be treated as a nuisance, even this language of nuisance.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
I mean, I think about kind of the.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Shame that Cindy has a little bit around the fact
that she.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Was fined, had to go to court.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
You know, this is not a wealthy family, and had
to pay money for really seeking help that was you know,
and it was unsuccessful. You know, this did not stop
the harassment that the family was getting.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Yeah, I mean, in talking to survivors, I've heard over
and over again the hurt and the sense of abandonment
that they feel once they learn that the city where
they live is labeling the violence and abuse they're experiencing
as a nuisance, and even beyond that that they are
labeling the survivor as a nuisance. It's a very personal insult,
(19:27):
But beyond that, it's really a sense of complete abandonment
as well as understanding that your city is further victimizing you,
because it's not just that the police are failing to
provide you with emergency protection. It goes way beyond that
that they are actually threatening you with punishment that will
(19:50):
only make you further vulnerable to the violence you're experiencing
in the first place. And so I think for many
survivors it's a realization that are not only alone in
dealing with the violence, but that they also have to
keep that violence secret from the police.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
In March twenty twenty one, after learning that a nuisance
ordinance had been used against Cindy's family, Casey Gwynn, an
Alliance for Hope International sent a letter to Eileen Weir,
then Mayor of Independence, asking her to revoke the statute.
She never responded. In late twenty twenty three, Alliance for
(20:33):
Hope sent another request to the new Mayor of Independence,
Rory Rowland. They're still waiting to hear back. What Happened
To Libby Caswell is written, reported, and hosted by me
Melissa Jelson. This episode was written by Marisa Brown and
(20:53):
edited and mixed by Jeremy Thal. Our executive producer is
Ryan Murdoch. For iHeart Podcast, executive producers are Jason English
and Katrina Norvel, with our supervising producer Carl catl. Our
theme song is written by Aaron Kaufman and performed by
Aaron Kaufman and Elizabeth Wolfe. Original music by Aaron Kaufman
(21:16):
with additional music by Jeremy Thal. To find out more
about my investigation or to send a tip, please email
me at what Happened to libbyat gmail dot com. Thanks
so much for listening.
Hi listeners. In this bonus episode of What Happened to
Libby Caswell, I want to spend some time talking about
nuisance laws, what they are, how they're used, and what's
being done about them. The nuisance law in Independence, Missouri
played a pivotal role in Libby's story. You may remember
from episode three that Cindy's house was labeled a nuisance
(00:25):
after she repeatedly called nine one one to report Devon's
ongoing harassment.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I always thought nuisance was the person that didn't clean
up the trash, or mowed or grass, or had loud
late night parties. I didn't think it pertained to hey,
help us here, help us, this kid is egging our house.
These you know, threatening us.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
The logic of this that they were being punished for
Devon's threatening behavior confused and angered at Cindy.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yes, it was a nuisance. It was a very big nuisance.
It was to us too, you know, we were struggling
to keep our daughters safe and our other two kids
and trying to hold down jobs, you know, at the
same time.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
I first heard about nuisance laws in twenty seventeen, when
I was a reporter for the Huffington Post. I covered
a story where a woman was evicted from her home
and ultimately exiled from her hometown of Maplewood, Missouri, for
calling to report domestic violence on multiple occasions. At the time,
(01:31):
I interviewed Saundra Park, who was then a lawyer with
the ACLU. They brought a lawsuit against Maplewood, arguing that
their nuisance law was unconstitutional. As a result, the town
was forced to amend its nuisance ordinance so that domestic
violence victims could no longer be penalized for calling the police.
(01:53):
Sondra Park is now the head of the Civil Rights
Bureau of the New York State Attorney General's Office. Read
out to her recently to talk about the nuisance ordinance
in Independence and its effect on Libby's tragic story. Here's
our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity.
(02:15):
I think most people don't even know about nuisance laws
or nuisance ordinances, so it would be great just to
hear from you a little bit of a backstory of
when and where they originated and for what purpose.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
So nuisance laws exist around the country. There have been
different types of laws like this on the books for decades.
They became much more popular in the nineties as a
result of tough on crime type attitudes, where people started
penalizing minor offenses as a way of possibly getting at
(02:49):
bigger offenses, so almost like a broken windows theory. Typically,
when you see justifications of these laws, there's a simplistic
idea that somehow, once you start penalized owners for police
calls or for possible criminal activity occurring at the home,
that somehow the landlord or the owner can stop that
from occurring. And I think that's just a completely misplaced
(03:14):
idea about what the relationship between crime and the home is,
particularly if you think about the domestic violence context. Domestic violence,
by its nature is usually committed at the home, and
so once you have a law that is targeting the
fact that there's a nine to one one call or
that there's a crime occurring at the home, you are
(03:35):
going to punish the victim of the domestic violence. I
think survivors in that situation quickly learn that reaching out
for police assistance will not provide any sort of safety
or security to them.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
What are the justifications for these types of policies and
what specific offenses are they looking to crack down on.
It seems like sometimes it's about noise or like track
or other stuff like that. But what typically when policymakers
have pushed these policies, like, what are they saying to
justify why they might be helpful.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
So early on, there were a lot of ordnances that
were more general to physical conditions at the home, like
things like trash or dead trees. Those are not the
types of ornances that I've been concerned about or you know,
had been advocating against. What we saw was a broadening
of the scope of these ordnances over time, particularly in
(04:30):
this nineties period that I mentioned earlier, where you saw
things like drug offenses potentially being targeted. You saw violence
being targeted without any consideration of who was committing the violence,
whether the person was actually the victim of the violence.
Just the fact that violence had occurred at the home
was going to make that property a target for nuisance enforcement.
(04:52):
And then we also saw that rather than specifying offenses,
a lot of cities took a very broad approach to
these ordinances where they would say, any violation of federal
state city law can trigger this nuisance ordinance, and it
could be as minor as a violation, so something very
(05:13):
low level as an offense, and that is actually, I
think very typical of the way these laws operate. Now,
the other types of justifications in the domestic violence context
in particular, is we've seen victim blaming explicitly in some
of the consideration of these types of laws. So you'll
see discussion of the fact that there are repeated domestic
(05:34):
violence calls, that that's a problem for the city and
they want that to stop, and rather than actually trying
to address the underlying issues of domestic violence in the home,
they want to crack down on the fact that there
are repeated calls, and so they are taking an extremely
punitive approach by punishing the folks who are generating those calls.
(05:57):
I think that the other really flaws philosophy behind this
type of ordinance is that somehow, if you reduce the
number of police calls, that equates to reducing crime, and
we know that's just completely a huge mistake. If anything,
you are allowing crime to continue to occur and violence
(06:18):
to escalate because people no longer feel that they can
reach out for emergency assistance.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Do we have any research or understanding about how these
might be unequally enforced.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Yeah, we've done that analysis and specific communities in different ways,
and we've seen that they disproportionately get enforced when the
calls are about domestic violence. We definitely have seen in
the nuisance ordinance context where they seem to be disproportionately
targeting people of color, people with disabilities, as well as
(06:53):
households dealing with domestic violence.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
So do you think it was intentional for domestic violence
to be considered a type of nuisance or was this
just a byproduct of the laws.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
When I first started working on this issue, I maybe
naively thought it was more of a byproduct situation, And
you know, the evidence really shows that it is very
explicit victim blaming in a lot of communities. I'm not
going to say every community, but we have seen in
some communities they specifically target domestic violence as a nuisance offense,
(07:31):
or they specifically talk about domestic violence as a type
of offense they want to target in adopting this type
of ordinance.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
If you've listened to the entire podcast, and I recommend
you do before going any further, you know that the
Independence Police Department used a local nuisance ordinance to pressure
Cindy to stop calling them despite Devon's ongoing harassment. When
I first read how the police described their interactions with
Libby and their reports, I was horrified. For example, here's
(08:37):
one incident on August twelfth, twenty thirteen, Cindy called nine
one one to report Devon swinging a hammer outside her house.
By the time police arrived, he was nowhere to be found.
The responding police officer wrote in his report that quote,
Dispatch advised that IPD had responded to the address five
(08:58):
times in August twenty thirty for disturbances and building checks,
all pertaining to Devin. Each time IPD has responded, Elizabeth
has been very uncooperative end quote. This was the moment
IPD decided to cite Cindy and Libby for maintaining a
nuisance property, and it would have ripple effects for months
(09:21):
and years to come. I showed the reports to Sondra
Park to get her expert interpretation.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
It struck me that there was no discussion of referrals
for services. That they seemed focused on the fact that
the alleged victim was very uncooperative, rather than you know,
thinking about how they could better work with her, better
talk with her, and you know that that is the
kind of language we see where police are turning towards
(09:51):
blaming the victim rather than thinking about ways of supporting
the victim. This is a very stark situation of that,
because when the officer notes her as being uncooperative, that's
the very same instance where they then turn around and
serve her parents with maintaining any nuisance residence. So it's
very clear that they believe that this family is causing
(10:16):
a nuisance rather than being deserving of support. Law enforcement
is clearly aware that it's a domestic situation. You know,
they're labeling some of these calls domestic disturbance, and that
is often the way police departments code these types of calls,
which I think raises another question, you know, whether the
disturbance language frames these situations more in a nuisance type
(10:40):
situation right, versus calling it like I don't know, some
other terminology where we would recognize the dynamics and domestic
violence or abuse happening.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
So we've gone from the summer to the next January.
She calls the police again, and just just the language
here of the police. Both Caswell women that police were
not going to make continual calls to the residents and
it would be treated at a disorderly house and parties
could be arrested on future calls. After a stern warning
(11:13):
and conversation, I elected not to arrest Livy Casa. I thought, like, wow,
she was actually being threatened with arrest in that case.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yeah, I mean that really was horrifying to see. I
think the timeline you're thinking through is very similar to
what I've seen in other situations, where once the family
understands that future calls will lead to enforcement, they stop calling. Typically,
they may make calls again in the future only when
(11:45):
they feel they really have no other choice, or when
the violence has escalated to a point that they don't
see any other way of addressing it. So it's not
surprising to me that there might have been a gap.
I think the law is set up to punish families
in this situation, and then we see in stark terms
(12:05):
that the police are enforcing or understanding the law to
do that by stating that continual calls could lead to
the arrest of the people who are making the calls,
even though they themselves are not alleged to have committed
any criminal activity. For me, I mean, this issue has
always been so disturbing because I really think it's writing
(12:27):
into law blaming the victim, because the victim can then
be arrested for having made these requests for police protection.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
So, in your work specifically with domestic violence and these laws,
can you talk a little bit about how these nuisance
laws affect victims of domestic violence and the different ways
that it affects them in terms of housing, financially, safety.
I know that they probably have a cascading amount of effects,
(13:01):
but I'd love to hear it just what you've seen firsthand.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
I've worked with many survivors who have been targeted under
these laws over the years. I think one thing to
note is for many survivors, the decision to call the
police is a very heavy one, and they often will
have experienced violence for some period of time, often lengthy
periods of time, before they make that first nine to
(13:25):
one one call. I'm thinking of one survivor I worked
with who experienced domestic abuse for seven years before she
made her first nine to one one call. And when
she made that call, it was in a city where
there was a nuisance ordinance. That first call triggered enforcement
against her home. First, she learns that actually calling nine
(13:47):
one one, and seeking protection will mean that she loses
a home for her and her kids. Second, she learns
that law enforcement, which is often understood by most of
society as where survivors are supposed to go to seek protection,
that instead of providing safety, they will threaten your housing
(14:09):
and possibly impose other types of financial and criminal consequences
because your call for help is considered a nuisance under
the local law. I think what's most difficult for survivors
in the situation is that as a society, we generally
have sent the message that people who are experiencing domestic
(14:30):
violence should call the police and should seek protection, and survivors,
when they then do that, to learn that they are
going to be punished in this way really undoes any
sense of there being a foundation of security or safety
that they could turn to. And I think they really
(14:53):
then learn that they are very much on their own,
which they might have thought even before this. And so
if you imagine a person in that situation who suffered
for many years, the message that sends is devastating.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Can you talk a little bit about the legal concerns
with these laws and how you might have challenged them
in the past.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Sure, so, I've worked on several lawsuits challenging these laws
around the country because these laws, the way they operate
is to punish people once they make the call to
the police. We think that's a very clear violation of
people's First Amendment rights, which includes the right to contact
law enforcement and to request assistance. And we now have
(15:38):
decisions from various courts recognizing that when these laws operate
to punish people for their nine to one one calls,
that is considered a violation of their First Amendment rights.
We've also challenged these laws on due process grounds because
usually there really is no process for someone to contest
(16:00):
whether they should be punished under these laws. There's no hearing,
there's no opportunity for the family to talk about why
they shouldn't be punished. It's just an automatic assumption that
if you violate the law, you will get whatever the
penalty is. And then we've also challenged these laws on
the grounds that they discriminate against women. We know that
(16:24):
in many communities, domestic violence is the biggest category of
police calls. So once you start enforcing based on calls
to police, you are harming domestic violence survivors, the majority
of whom are women. What we've seen is as a
result of our cases, the cities have appealed the laws
and pay damages to our clients. We've also used the
(16:46):
lawsuits to spur on state legislation as well as we
now have a new federal production and the Violence Against
Women Act.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
So it sounds like the lawsuits that you have worked on,
when they've been successful, have resulted in these ordinances being repealed.
Are we seeing like a move towards getting rid of
these ordinances? Are really only the ones that you've brought
a hammer down on have actually made any change.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
It's varied. A lot of times, our lawsuits have helped
support state legislation which prohibits local laws that punish residents
for seeking emergency assistance. It's an ongoing project because you know,
we're talking locality by locality, and so that's why we've
taken these approaches of trying to focus on state and
(17:33):
federal level protections. We have seen cities repealing or amending
their ordinances, but you know, it's a continuing conversation about
educating folks that these ordinances exist. At the federal level,
the latest Violence Against Women Act includes a protection that
applies to cities that receive federal funding through the Community
(17:58):
Development Block Grant program, which is a pretty widespread program,
and basically it creates protection from being penalized under ordinances
for seeking emergency assistance or for criminal activity of which
you were not at fault. It might not address every situation,
but the way penalty is described is that you should
(18:18):
not be penalized by being evicted, by not having your
lease renewed, or by other types of fines and fees
or criminal consequences.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
I know we've discussed this, but just sort of just
big picture, what kind of message it sends to victims
to be treated as a nuisance, even this language of nuisance.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
I mean, I think about kind of the.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Shame that Cindy has a little bit around the fact
that she.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Was fined, had to go to court.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
You know, this is not a wealthy family, and had
to pay money for really seeking help that was you know,
and it was unsuccessful. You know, this did not stop
the harassment that the family was getting.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Yeah, I mean, in talking to survivors, I've heard over
and over again the hurt and the sense of abandonment
that they feel once they learn that the city where
they live is labeling the violence and abuse they're experiencing
as a nuisance, and even beyond that that they are
labeling the survivor as a nuisance. It's a very personal insult,
(19:27):
But beyond that, it's really a sense of complete abandonment
as well as understanding that your city is further victimizing you,
because it's not just that the police are failing to
provide you with emergency protection. It goes way beyond that
that they are actually threatening you with punishment that will
(19:50):
only make you further vulnerable to the violence you're experiencing
in the first place. And so I think for many
survivors it's a realization that are not only alone in
dealing with the violence, but that they also have to
keep that violence secret from the police.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
In March twenty twenty one, after learning that a nuisance
ordinance had been used against Cindy's family, Casey Gwynn, an
Alliance for Hope International sent a letter to Eileen Weir,
then Mayor of Independence, asking her to revoke the statute.
She never responded. In late twenty twenty three, Alliance for
(20:33):
Hope sent another request to the new Mayor of Independence,
Rory Rowland. They're still waiting to hear back. What Happened
To Libby Caswell is written, reported, and hosted by me
Melissa Jelson. This episode was written by Marisa Brown and
(20:53):
edited and mixed by Jeremy Thal. Our executive producer is
Ryan Murdoch. For iHeart Podcast, executive producers are Jason English
and Katrina Norvel, with our supervising producer Carl catl. Our
theme song is written by Aaron Kaufman and performed by
Aaron Kaufman and Elizabeth Wolfe. Original music by Aaron Kaufman
(21:16):
with additional music by Jeremy Thal. To find out more
about my investigation or to send a tip, please email
me at what Happened to libbyat gmail dot com. Thanks
so much for listening.
Host
Melissa Jeltsen
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