Solutions reporting spurs replication of domestic violence response

A story about a Louisiana sheriff’s lieutenant who created an inventive program to protect women from domestic violence (https://www.thetrace.org/2020/02/guns-domestic-violence-lafourche-parish-valerie-martinez/) led several other localities to consider replicating the model. The lieutenant, Valerie Martinez-Jordan, also was invited to develop a domestic violence curriculum for police departments across the state, which often ranks in the top three for rates of women murdered by men (here: https://secureservercdn.net/166.62.112.150/bk4.85e.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/Violence-Policy-Center-2019-Press-Release.pdf). Martinez-Jordan, herself a survivor of domestic abuse, put her small Lafourche Parish sheriff’s office in the vanguard when she created the firearms retrieval program, which takes guns away from domestic abusers. The federal Department of Justice’s community policing publication featured Lafourche Parish’s system in its newsletter (here: https://cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/10-2020/spotlight_on_the_field.html).