Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel

Season 6 Episode 6 Broken Blue Line: Confronting Officer-Perpetrated Domestic Violence

• Ruth Reymundo Mandel & David Mandel • Season 6 • Episode 6

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When Bruce Bieber's phone rang at 2:50 AM, his world shattered. Three deputies stood at his door with news that his daughter Abby, a dedicated police officer known for her compassion and professionalism, had been murdered by her boyfriend – a fellow officer with a documented history of domestic violence that had been systematically minimized by their department.

This powerful conversation exposes the deadly consequences of law enforcement's failure to address domestic violence within their ranks. Bruce shares how his daughter's killer had previously threatened another girlfriend at gunpoint, yet received only a token reprimand to "stop dating her" rather than facing criminal charges or meaningful discipline. This pattern of protection enabled him to continue serving while posing a lethal threat to those closest to him.

The discussion delves into what experts call the "data desert" surrounding officer-involved domestic violence (OIDV) – the deliberate lack of tracking and transparency that shields departments from accountability. With estimates suggesting 40-60% of officers may perpetrate domestic abuse, this creates a horrifying reality where victims call 911 only to have their cases potentially handled by officers who are abusers themselves.

We examine how well-intentioned policies like zero-tolerance rules and firearms restrictions for domestic abusers can backfire, sometimes discouraging reporting rather than promoting safety. Bruce advocates for pattern-based approaches that allow departments to address concerning behaviors before they escalate to violence, potentially saving lives like his daughter's.

For survivors trapped in relationships with law enforcement officers, Bruce offers hard-earned wisdom: recognize the warning signs, understand that leaving is the most dangerous time, and connect with experts who can help create a comprehensive safety plan. His message resonates with the urgency of someone who's lost everything and is determined that no other family should experience this preventable tragedy.

If you're concerned about domestic violence in your community or workplace, join us in demanding accountability, transparency, and change. Together, we can ensure that those who wear the badge truly protect and serve all members of society – including their own families.

Other OIDV Related Episodes
Episode 27: “How much crime are you willing to let your police commit?”

Episode 26: Listening to the voices of survivors of officer-involved dom

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."

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David Mandel:

All right, we're back.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

And we're back. Hey, there, we're in two different places, all of us. Well, we're in three different places.

David Mandel:

We're in three different places with our guests and ourselves. But where are you? Who are you?

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

I am Ruth Ramundo Mandel and I am the co-owner and business development officer at the Safe and Together Institute, and I'm actually in my hometown of Santa Rosa, california, and so I want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land here in my hometown, in my birthplace the Pomo, the Coast, miwok and the Wapu peoples, and I want to acknowledge Indigenous elders, past, present and emerging, and also to and also to put my commitment in there to preserving and loving up the land and caring for our relationships and for what connects us and sustains us. So here we are and we're about to do another episode of Partner with a Survivor. And, david, do you want to talk about our guest?

David Mandel:

Sure, and for those of you who are listening for the first time, I'm David Mandel, CEO and also co-owner of the Safety of the Earth Institute, and I'm on Tunxus Missoula land here and back home in Connecticut, and similarly, I want to just acknowledge the Indigenous Elders past, present and emerging who are on. Today's episode is a topic that we've touched on before and something that, Ruth, you really brought to the Institute and we dove into it pretty heavily a few years ago and unfortunately it's still relevant, which is officer-involved domestic violence. The term is, you know, really OIDV is the term, but really we're talking about officer-perpetrated domestic violence, and we at the Institute really took it on because we understood that we were in a position, as a freestanding organization, to really speak about something that can be challenging for local embedded organizations to speak about. But they have profound impact in so many different ways because, as law enforcement officers who might be perpetrating domestic abuse against their family members and loved ones, not only are they a threat to those loved ones and have tremendous power as a law enforcement officer in terms of entrapment, their knowledge of the law, their relationships, their you know, in some places they're carrying a firearm but also in the correlation between that behavior and crimes against civilians.

David Mandel:

The data is pretty clear that those folks are often engaging in crimes against civilians and against their fellow officers, you know bullying, harassment, and so there's multiple layers here, and what we know is that domestic violence survivors and the public often don't get the best response from the police, and we have to believe that part of that is that there are domestic violence offenders who are being retained by police departments who are then responding to these crimes, and we've had tremendous law enforcement response to this topic. We did a conference, we did podcasts that we'll reference in our notes, but today we are having a survivor of homicide, Bruce Bieber, who's going to be talking about the murder of his daughter Abby a few years ago, and we're really honored, Bruce, to have you on the murder of his daughter Abby a few years ago and we're really honored, Bruce, to have you on the show and thank you for joining us.

Bruce Bieber:

It's my great pleasure, David and Ruth Honored to talk about Abby anytime.

David Mandel:

And I just want to start by just saying you know that we've read the background material. You know, ruth and I have talked to you some and I just want to start with, obviously, our condolences for the loss of your daughter and just to say to listeners, just from the stuff I read, how amazing your daughter sounded above and beyond being a serving officer, sounded above and beyond, you know, being a serving officer. You know that that everything I read talked about how she was caring, concerned about other officers, that she mentored other officers, um and so she wasn't just your run the mill beat cop, that that she was. You know that she sounds like a really special person. So, you know, I I'd love it if you just told us the story. You know, tell us a little bit about her and then, obviously, you know, talk a little bit about the murder-suicide that happened in January 2022.

Bruce Bieber:

Certainly You're absolutely right. She was an unusual person and much more than a beat cop by any stretch of the imagination, every parent's delight Radiant in all regards a scholar, athlete, a more loyal friend. Nobody would ever have an imagination and an intelligence, a curiosity, a sense of humor and an absolute dedication to helping those less fortunate than she and without the ability, the power, the resources to help themselves sometimes, whether it was children, the oppressed animals. Even Abby was a giving person, a funny person, a fierce person, person.

Bruce Bieber:

She was the youngest and only daughter with two older brothers both of whom went into law enforcement and whom she held in high regard, and I think she followed in their footsteps. Recognizing the path that they'd charted allowed her to tap many of her natural skills and abilities, and you know, she would have been a child protective detective had things not happened the way they did.

Bruce Bieber:

And she would have given a life of service to the community whatever community she was in, she certainly could have done any other endeavor. She could have gone in any direction and she chose this one.

Bruce Bieber:

And unfortunately it didn't end well for her or us? And, frankly, for the community and those she would have served and those she served with, it's certainly our loss in the major sense that she was our daughter, but to a lesser extent it's a loss to those that served with her and all of her friends and those who I mean. We got contacted by people she'd arrested who felt that you know the courtesy, the respect, the grace that she had showed them. The people at the Dunkin' Donuts she frequented were bereft.

Bruce Bieber:

They were, you know, moved to write us, you know moved to write us, and to your point. There was a special feeling, an aura, a power, a presence about her that was palpable and, frankly, anybody who sees pictures of her seem to be moved by it.

Bruce Bieber:

There's a radiance like I said, that seems to just emanate from every fiber of her being. She is sorely missed and you know it's a hole you can't fill, but what I can do is do all in my power to see that another dad, another mom doesn't ever face this. I'm going to hold up a picture and it will probably be immediately apparent to what that is. That's the three deputies at our door at 2.50 something in the morning, coming to tell us that our daughter's not coming home from the extended weekend vacation during which she was murdered.

Bruce Bieber:

Slaughtered really by a then deputy boyfriend named Dan Layden, who the next very day, had he not, killed her and then himself would have become a homicide detective for the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

Right, yeah.

Bruce Bieber:

Which to me is Bruce.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

I'm so sorry. You know, and I'm struck by the beauty of Abby, how wonderful she was in the execution of her job, what a benefit to those organizations People like her are are. And there was a prior pattern of violence with the officer who murdered her and it was documented as well.

Bruce Bieber:

Can you talk a little bit about that fact? Yes, a prior record of violence is accurate. It's a correct depiction of the facts. I think there'd be pushback if this was being litigated, and I'll tell you why it turned out.

Bruce Bieber:

On July 3rd 2016, dan Layden was involved in a DV call with a prior girlfriend which they had been undergoing a trial separation, if you will.

Bruce Bieber:

He'd been inflicting the most severe and horrendous forms of abuse of all manner physical, emotional, sexual, you name it ran the gamut don't go here, don't go there, don't wear that, don't want you talking to those people, don't want you doing this. Extreme jealousy, all of those terrible indicators of an abusive man out of control. They sort of separated but agreed to get back together one night and it was then that he started stalking her I think technically that's the right term and he was pounding on her car. He didn't want her to drive away in a parking lot and he was pounding on her car. He didn't want her to drive away in a parking lot and he put his foot under her wheel while pounding on the windows, banging on the car, which I think is the violent element that puts meat on the bones of your characterization, because a guy like that, there's no end of knowing what he might do and, frankly, we now know in retrospect what he would do.

Bruce Bieber:

He himself called his own agency to report that he was afraid the ruse. The pretext that he used was that his on-again, off-again girlfriend was going to drive drunk. They'd been at different places, each consumed alcohol. It wasn't true. An alcohol specialist came to the scene and deemed her not to be under the influence and, by the way, he left in an Uber. So if you read the reports and I've talked to a lot of experienced law enforcement who understand how manipulative and how sort of engineering or not engineering, but how rigorously a cop can engineer an outcome by manipulating the system, by understanding how to write the report, knowing the victim's less likely to be able to use the terms of art and phrase things in a way that will implicate him and I think even lay persons reading his statement and her statement will.

Bruce Bieber:

Reading his statement and her statement will, if they have any discernment and imagination, or not even much can tell. Wait a minute. This can't be right the way he's writing this and her unvarnished honesty. The victim china ratner. Um, it's apparent that he's engineering an outcome here.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

He's using his advanced and enhanced skills in interrogation, in police report writing, to set up the outcome in advance and provide cover for himself quite a trackable pattern of behaviors that law enforcement officers who engage in intimate partner violence, domestic violence, coercive control all use the skills of their training in their control of their victims and oftentimes also use police equipment to track and to stalk their victims. And we're really aware of a lot of cases where police officers will be charged with misuse of police resources as a disciplinary action. Was he disciplined in the first case at all, or was it just documented? And sometimes these departments will not even document the incidents or the patterns because they're trying to avoid liability, which is also a problem. Was he disciplined the first time?

Bruce Bieber:

The extent of the discipline is laughable. He was told by the then corporal now the chief deputy, the number two in the agency to stop dating her. Don't date her anymore. That was it. That's not. I don't think that qualifies as punishment or any kind of reprimand at all.

Bruce Bieber:

It's not uncommon, to your point that there are patterns that clearly depict and reveal either an intentional or an unintentional, systematic diminishing and lessening of charges, of outcomes, and it extends to the prosecution. Obviously in the legal sense Right, but they minimize it. And, by the way, he met her on a car accident scene, which is a big no-no. Cops are not supposed to date women. They meet on car accident scenes, for God's sake, and they knew that. And there was very little or no follow up investigation. There were no charges, whether there was.

Bruce Bieber:

Now I will tell you the people, the other deputies who responded to this call were outraged. I've spoken with a number of them. They thought he should have been fired. They wanted to bring false imprisonment charges. They even went to the state's attorney who declined to bring those charges. So that means there was arguably probable cause PC to arrest him for a crime. I think in retrospect there was PC to arrest him for stalking. Certainly for conduct unbecoming. There were any number of charges. Disorderly conduct certainly for conduct unbecoming, there were any number of charges. Disorderly conduct. Everybody knows cops can charge you and I sitting here on this call for disorderly conduct if they want. So will it be sustained? Likely not. But they did almost less than nothing because in the face of a number of charges they could have brought and some who were there thought should be brought the only thing they did was say don't date him.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

Right, they told her that, not him.

Bruce Bieber:

No, they told him Don't Okay In her presence. So it's in the record. There is a report. I did any number of public record requests, yeah, and then the not we may get later to the reaction of the agency to my inquiries.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

It's a whole separate topic, but suffice it to say they were inadequate. Yeah, I, you know. I want to circle back around to the misuse of police services and how officers who perpetrate domestic abuse, sexual violence against intimate partners, use the reporting pathways. They report on their victims. Now, if you and I were to make a false 911 call, we could be charged with a crime. If we were to make false allegations, we could do so as well a crime If we were to make false allegations, we could do so as well. But it seems like with this particular case and with a lot of the cases that we've seen, that targeting of coercive control using the police knowledge, the police services, the police tech, the police authority to control and to harm their victims is never really even held accountable, even if it's placed in a behavioral file of accountability. This lack of addressing of his behaviors then was the doorway for him to perpetrate murder and violence against your daughter, abby.

Bruce Bieber:

Certainly I'm going to backtrack just a little bit on the misuse of the skills and the technology for a second and say there came a time I was having a conversation with one of the great luminaries and legends in the anti-OIDV battle, dottie Davis, about coming up with a database of recent OIDV cases in each of the 50 states. She said that didn't seem to exist and a lot of the law enforcement folks she's speaking to and addressing fold their arms, close their ears and eyes and brains and say it doesn't happen to us, it doesn't apply, we don't have that. And she knew better and was sort of bemoaning the fact that that doesn't seem to exist. So I said geez, dottie, I'm an idiot, I can do that. And I did a relatively effortless Excel data sheet searching open source data for recent cases. By recent we meant within two years in each of the 50 states. Now in the course of doing that in most of the states I was able to find multiple recent cases of OIDV. So I had to choose. So in the act of choosing I had to winnow through hundreds If there were three or four or five in each of 50, that's hundreds of cases. And in the course of quickly topically, surveying this in the most casual way, you stumble into some of the dispositions and you see patterns evolving. If I were a true academic with the skills and ability, there's a lot of meat to put on bones.

Bruce Bieber:

But the point of it to get back to your comment is they start out felony domestic violence, strangulation, attempted homicides really horrendous, scary, applicable, accurate, apt criminal charges. Horrendous, scary, applicable, accurate, apt criminal charges. After they've processed through the meat grinder, that is, the systematic diminishment of OIDV and DV. Frankly, generally they end up getting charged only with misuse of a telephonic device and that's almost the exact phrase. So you wait and you're like.

Bruce Bieber:

There's a guy named Ronald Davis, a trooper in Pennsylvania I've been railing about. There's a video he got a friend to videotape him kidnapping his former girlfriend. He's a married guy, has a girlfriend breaking up, kidnaps her, wants to get her involuntarily committed, enlists his buddy who does a great quality video Good job, bud. And you hear the woman, as sane as the day is long, saying what, what are you doing? You're, this is not right. You got to stop this. And and he was acquitted. He was acquitted in the. I don't understand it. It makes no sense. So those cases get pled down. Now I know you guys are aware of the Lautenberg Amendment. You get charged with misdemeanor domestic violence. You lose your gun. You lose your gun, you lose your job. You could do a whole show on that alone. Why women don't do this? Well, he'll lose his job if I call. You know, blah, blah, blah, right. So everybody knows oh, can't have him lose his job even though he's the offender, right. So we'll charge him with misuse of a telephonic device.

Bruce Bieber:

And that's, you may as well say don't date her anymore, because it's the same laughable outcome of a system that's out of control. And okay, now we'll get back to your real question.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

These are really important aspects of speaking about OIDV, because there's very tangible, concrete pathways by which accountability is being subverted, and when I say accountability, I mean the law.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

Absolutely I mean crime and I crime which then has tentacles, which reaches out. And it's really important for us to state that law enforcement is the singular and most important and biggest doorway to safety and services for women and children who are being abused. So it's so important that we talk about how retaining perpetrators, criminals, as law enforcement is directly impeding the job of law enforcement, and domestic violence calls are their bread and butter, so they're making a lot of money off of domestic violence calls and they're not living up to their duty and they are not living up to their values. So I think it's really important that people know and understand how these things are being ignored, subverted, not held accountable by either hiding these criminal behaviors behind misdemeanors. And there's one little piece of information I want to share with listeners, and that is that there's multiple complaints now globally around police services and the retention of sexual and domestic violence perpetrators and criminals in general that are impacting our communities, and what we see when these men are operating or these, whatever their gender, are operating as law enforcement officers is a tremendous amount of human and also financial cost.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

And there's recently in our area there was a case where a sheriff murdered his wife and killed himself and the law enforcement agency where he was an officer refuses to share his file because they know very well that if there's any indication that he had a pattern of violence that they are liable for not holding him accountable.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

So they will hide these behaviors behind behavioral language in their disciplinary files or they were simply not recorded at all in order for them to not be liable. So what happens is, after a while you retain those officers and you have a toxic work environment where good law enforcement officers cannot safely operate because they're coming into contact with criminals who have power in their agencies. And I imagine a beautiful human who's doing a great job at law enforcement like your daughter, abby and I know your other two children are also law enforcement officers must be deeply impacted by that toxic environment. I don't know if you have any, any, if there was any indicators pre, you know, murder of Abby, or if your other children have talked about the the internal problems of retaining these officers with violent patterns.

Bruce Bieber:

Very definitely these officers with violent patterns, very definitely. My sons both now work for the same agency and they had an episode where an officer was sexually abusing women while on duty, got caught and the chief did the right thing, held a press conference, held up his picture figured. If he did it this time he probably did it before wanted the public to come forward with any information if they had also suffered at his hands. And my sons were both ready to go out the door and quit if there was any effort to cover that up, any effort to minimize the degree and extent of the crime and, frankly, the outrageous insult that would be to the agency to retain in their midst and minimize the crimes, as you say, of a law enforcement officer. So thank God for everybody. The chief did the right thing, he was the right kind of guy and did it the right way. Charges were brought and, oddly and insanely, a jury acquitted him. But you know we can't hold that against the police department, that's just lawyering, and so I do know that. And Mark Wynn, I think, is very, very good at talking about the incongruity of having a bank robber or a drug dealer on the night shift and allowing them to continue to rob banks and deal drugs. And yet you so readily and you would, a fellow officer, would go to the chief and say hey, he's robbing banks. We can't have that, we're cops. He's selling drugs Can't have it, we're cops. Oh, he's beating his wife, it's not my business, I can't interfere with that. That's not for me to say, well, why not? That's a crime too. No, you know, it's a prosecutable crime. You absolutely have to say something. It absolutely diminishes and degrades your integrity as a law enforcement organization if you retain and you complicitly permit and tolerate criminal behavior from cops.

Bruce Bieber:

I mean, mark has, I think, a very good way of taking a very complicated situation. I mean, in this few minutes here we've talked about six or eight different angles, all of which could be ours, and yet we pack it into this. You know, police, perpetrated domestic abuse, oidv, umbrella it is a thick, sticky wicket, but Mark is really good at breaking it down in this most simplistic terms. How dare we, how dare we allow cops to do this thing over and over and over? And you had Leonore Johnson, boolin Johnson.

Bruce Bieber:

It was the mid-80s. It wasn't until the 91 testimony on the Hill that her statement came out and it went public in a big way that obviously Alex Roslin talks about in his book but we're talking about from the middle 80s. She became aware this was an issue and sort of lit the fuse right and obviously she just stumbled on it. It wasn't her intent but it ripped the lid off it. And then the David Brame Crystal Brame case in Tacoma 22 years ago accelerated it. Suddenly the world was aware of OIDV. My daughter is dead. Ellie Shea was killed in October of last year, just months ago in Orlando by a deputy. She was a sergeant. Ellie Shea nobody knows her name except those who knew and loved her.

Bruce Bieber:

But the point of it is it keeps happening, the numbers keep going up, the women continue to die and you guys know better than anyone at even the civilian rates of the prevalence of domestic abuse. If you have 700,000 or 800,000 cops and we do, of all kinds, you know state, federal, local, whatever you're talking about hundreds of thousands of families going to bed every night with an abusive cop. You're talking about two and five, three and five cops showing up to a DV call, being abusers or batterers themselves. Gabby Petito's mom, nicole, and stepdad Jim Schmidt live in the county next to me here. I consider them friends. We've gone to dinner. She's keynote speaking at the CCA AW conference in May in Dallas.

Bruce Bieber:

The cops that showed up in Moab had history. You can see it. You watch the video If you're again. If you're perceptive, you can tell the nonverbal communication that's going on. He's jolly. I talked to this with my son, who's a detective in children and family crimes and an adept observer, a keen interpreter of nonverbal communication language. He has to be, it's his job and it speaks volumes. And we have too many cops doing this. It speaks volumes and we have too many cops doing this.

Bruce Bieber:

And, david, I think in one of your introductions or one of the other conversations you had with some of those other OIDV folks, you made the. Frankly, if you think about it, you should want to get criminals out of your ranks and if you don't, I'd like to talk to you about why that is. What possible motivation could you have? That's a good one. And any motivations you have are illegitimate ones, frankly, and they should be readily tossed. But there needs to be a conversation about the reluctance of too many in law enforcement, command staffs and the society in general to hold them to account. And you know we need cops. We want cops, but we want good cops. We don't want criminal cops, and I don't know why that's a hard concept for so many, but it is.

David Mandel:

Yeah, I think that you're right to sort of underline that this is an anti-police. And you know, I speak about this all the time and I just was writing about this which is one of the highest acts of friendship and the highest acts of care is to say to somebody you love and who matters to you that they're doing something that is harmful to themselves and others. To turn a blind eye to that is not the act of a friend or a loved one. A loved one calls you out and says, hey, this is a problem or this doesn't fit with you know, and we can speak with this organization, and this doesn't fit with your mission as law enforcement. This undermines it. It makes it.

David Mandel:

It's part of the reason why, when the National Domestic Violence Organizations in the US a few years ago did a survey of women both who had called the police and who hadn't yet called the police domestic violence survivors, that the majority of them said they would not call the police again if they hadn't, or they would not call the police if they hadn't yet.

David Mandel:

And you've got to stop and ask yourself why and some of that is about the perpetrator right that their particular perpetrator will escalate or that it won't fix the raft of problems and we have to really understand that the law enforcement is a fairly blunt instrument for a fairly complex problem.

David Mandel:

You know that much of what domestic violence perpetrators do is not arrestable. So again, so there's multiple reasons. But to not bring up the idea that the law enforcement response can be flawed from the very beginning and that one of the factors if we're retaining, you know, we think that OIDV perpetrators may represent anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of the police forces, which is the numbers that are thrown around without enough research, because the research hasn't been supported. But these are the numbers that people who know suspect that we're talking about that. If we're worried about a poor police response, or like we're worried about the lack of processing of rape kits, you know, those kinds of things, we have to say wait a second, are those personnel the right people to be doing it? Are there issues? And this would be one of them. So I think it's the act of a friend.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

Right. You know, we're throwing a lot of money at this problem collectively.

David Mandel:

Right.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

You know, everybody likes to talk about efficiencies but nobody wants to do the efficiency behaviors. And the efficiency behaviors are actually addressing the people in your organizations who are criminal, who are using the system to their selfish ends and that are not doing their jobs properly. And law enforcement's job is pretty defined and prescribed and we can follow that. And law enforcement's job is pretty defined and prescribed and we can follow that, but interestingly enough, there lacks data and I think that that's absolutely intentional. I think the data desert in law enforcement is 100% intentional and we know that there was an effort to create some reporting and one of the reasons there was an effort to create some reporting was because the FBI recognized that retention of criminals in law enforcement agencies was a national security issue and we can underscore that now with a couple of mass terrorism events by military and law enforcement and it's also a community-based drain on our resources.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

Police department is. Retaining perpetrators should be an indicator that there's some fundamental disconnect at the top of these organizations and misrepresentation of their desire to actually apply the law and that's their job. So it's very important that we, when we, when we square the all of the different pieces, because OIDV is a huge beast. It has a lot of different angles and there's a lot of crimes that are attached to it. Besides intimate partner violence, sexual violence is attached to it. You know a lot of officers who have been convicted of police overreach or brutality also had patterns of domestic abuse. But I wanted to mention that one of one of the things that law enforcement itself has done, and also the military, is their zero tolerance laws have contributed to this problem. Yeah, I know there's a backfire there.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

There's a backfire there.

Bruce Bieber:

Right.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

We can fix that. We can fix that, but we have to fix it in a cogent way. Yeah, go, bruce, talk about that. That's important.

Bruce Bieber:

No, you're absolutely right and frankly, the Lautenberg Amendment had the same effect Good intention. You know, and we all know about where the road to hell goes or how you get there. They intended to save women by saying if a cop who they know to have a gun you know uses it in a crime of domestic abuse, they you know they're stripped of the gun and therefore the job.

Bruce Bieber:

But when that becomes a disincentive to report and we know that domestic abuse is woefully underreported in the civilian context, more so if you're familiar in particular with Diane Wettendorf's work again another legend she'll tell you, in the context of women, god forbid if they are cops who are also victimized by other cop intimate partners. You're never going to hear about it.

Bruce Bieber:

I mean the silence is deafening. But the fundamental point is, like you said, with zero tolerance you can't do that. Even a female cop victim who must report, for instance, if there's zero you know some of them are there's mandatory reporting You've got to. Oh my God, there's so many angles here. Oh my God, there's so many angles here. As you know, one of the three Alex Roslin causes of OIDV is the wall of silence. Let's just shorthand it with the wall of silence that a tendency to not rat out, to inform, to report the bad domestic violence behavior of your peers violence, behavior of your peers, and to address that, to tear that down.

Bruce Bieber:

Some say, well, if you don't report it, if you have knowledge of it and you don't report it, you will be fired. You will be severely punished. There's mandatory reporting. If I find out on my night shift, johnny's not only robbing banks and dealing meth, he's also beating his wife and I don't report that I will be and dealing meth, he's also beating his wife and I don't report that, I will be summarily fired. Well, great, what if I'm the victim? What if I'm a female and I'm a female officer and I'm very much aware that I'm being abused by a male officer and I don't report it because I might lose my job or a thousand other reasons. A woman doesn't want to come forward, she's going to lose her job. I mean, that's not right. So these hard and fast rules, mandatory separation, lautenberg rules they have to be parsed more thoughtfully to your point. And a lot of the OIDV, uster and Bob domestic violence model policies had a zero tolerance thing and then they've realized nope, that doesn't work, we got to scale it back.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

Well, I want to talk about that really quickly because we are aware of some global changes to militaries that we've worked with where they've dealt with that problem with zero tolerance and instead of focusing on the zero tolerance, they replaced that language with pattern-based language where they made it very clear that if a soldier or a law enforcement officer had a pattern of violence towards an intimate partner, that that was an issue that was behaviorally against their behavioral expectations, and they could be summarily fired. There didn't have to be a conviction, there didn't have to be any prosecution, they could just say you know what, your behavioral pattern is unfit and so we are firing you. And they already have that ability. That language, that ability is already there for militaries and law enforcement, but it is not being utilized. Have you seen any utilization of that pattern-based recognition and linking it with the values of the organizations, the stated values of the organizations?

Bruce Bieber:

it with the values of the organizations, the stated values of the organizations? Well, to the contrary, I'd say I haven't seen it, because in a similar vein, there's a bifurcation in most of the model policies and there's a few competing policies out there. Mind you, it's not just IACP's model policy, but they have an administrative track and a criminal track right, a criminal prosecution track and path and an administrative one. And Abby's agency it's the, I think, now 11th biggest sheriff's office by sworn employees in the nation, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. They're employees at will. You know they have very scant union protections here.

Bruce Bieber:

It's not like you know some of the more unionized north and upper central states, and yet those PBAs and unions have considerable sway on the data collection piece, which I agree with you on. If there's pushback, it's coming from them. Those are the organizations that organizationally, systemically, don't want that data recorded. But with regard to pattern-based, I can only say that there was a complete lack of administrative follow-through in my daughter's case and I left out a key point. By the way, just you know, we said we'd ramble a little bit, but we asked about the prior bad acts, the prior violence, the prior behavior of Dan Layden, who killed my daughter. It was only days after that episode, on July 3rd 2016, when they said don't date her anymore. Of course, he didn't listen to that and he went on and continued to date her and in fact, she tells her video account on Instagram that he put his gun to her head and threatened and in this order and I think the order is material I will kill your dogs and then you and then myself.

Bruce Bieber:

That malevolence that predatory, just that depraved mind, kill your dogs. Like Abby, chyna revered and adored her dogs.

Bruce Bieber:

We have, like I said, abby's dog here now, I have no doubt, my wife, we have no doubt. Had that happened in a slightly different context, that dog would be dead too. Not the point. But these people, I mean we have to figure out what the tells, the indicators, the cues are coming in the door. Obviously, the hiring part we're falling apart a little bit. Obviously the hiring part would have fallen apart a little bit. We can get to that later maybe.

Bruce Bieber:

But he did that to that victim days after this episode and I went to that sheriff, chad Chronister, incredibly powerful guy politically. He was just nominated by the president to be the head of the DEA and that fell apart. I don't know if you heard about that. He nominated this sheriff to be the DEA director and then almost immediately he was not any longer a candidate and he's married to a billionaire, very powerful dude. I sat in the room with this guy numbers of times. I said, chad, what would stop what happened to my daughter from happening, not tomorrow, not next week? Tonight? What protocols, what policy changes, what procedures have you implemented or might you implement that would prevent this? And all they can say and do is say it wouldn't happen again. We are rolling the dice with somebody else's daughter tonight because he doesn't have the imagination or the will to just even look into what might be done differently.

Bruce Bieber:

And I came to find out hey, the IACP in 99, revised in 2003, model rules, florida, for God's sake. The FSU there's a terrific woman named Karen Omi, almost on the same time track developed their own model rules, convened a panel, 360 degrees of experts. They developed a model rule policy. They implemented it, they trained it. It worked. Verizon funded it for years. Verizon, the corporation, had that oh crap, what was the name? Amy's Story. There's a terrific video, a production I think Gloria Steinem helped was a part of, about a young woman trapped in a terrible murderous cycle of wasn't OIDV but domestic abuse and he killed her at a Verizon store. So that's why it became dear to Verizon's corporate heart. They funded the training, the OIDV training. They implemented it. It was developed by FSU until they didn't, and when the money ran out, they took that training regimen and put it on a shelf where it sits today, much to my frustration, on a shelf where it sits today, much to my frustration. And they've done follow-up studies, academic, rigorous studies that show it worked, that it raised awareness amongst the officers, and you know a third to half of their calls are DV related. A third or so of the line of duty deaths of cops, mark Wynn will tell you, are from DV calls.

Bruce Bieber:

It is in their interest individually, in the aggregate, as cops, to address the cycle of domestic violence and family abuse, the patterns. They should be doing everything and anything they can to save themselves, let alone to carry out their mission with more integrity and faithfulness to their mission. But they don't have the curiosity, they refuse. And I think you go back to Alex Rosner. Why A patriarchy and power and control? Right, right, it's all about power and control and ridiculously antiquated notions of some among us, of men who continue to think women are chattels and and everybody and everything they want to do they can and should do, and nobody is damn well going to stop on. You know what that ship sailed and it ain't honestly know what to do other than to do the things that I know work, which are to say, to talk about it, to shine light on it, to tell Abby's story and try to resurrect the policies and the training to implement mandatory policy.

Bruce Bieber:

You can't, nobody can tell me sitting here now, of the 18,000 or so law enforcement agencies in this nation. How many have implemented any kind of OIDV policy? Nobody knows. Back to the data, desert right, and some of them even tell you what are you talking about? We don't have that. Ask Dottie Davis. Right, don't have it. The hell, you don't. You got human beings, you got men. You got women, you got OIDV.

David Mandel:

You got human beings, you got men, you got women, you got OIDV, and you don't see what you don't look for or at, of course, and somehow keep thinking about is. I listen to your passion about this, your clarity, your analytical brain, your forward thinking about sort of this is something that should be a relic of the past. Unfortunately, it's every day still when it shouldn't be. And now how it doesn't serve law enforcement, doesn't serve communities, doesn't serve families. All I keep thinking about is just your stated mission, which is to make sure that another family's not burying their daughter or a child who is a victim of police-perpetrated domestic violence, and so I really feel that so deeply and I really appreciate that. And I'm just wondering, because there are so many. We could go on and talk forever. You know if there are for you. You know we have a lot of professionals listening. We have a lot of people all over the globe. What do you want them to take away from Abby's story and from your campaigning around this issue?

Bruce Bieber:

This is going to sound very strange, but I liken it to slavery. There was a time that in this nation and many others people, most people maybe even thought it was perfectly appropriate to own other people as mere chattels, as mere possessions no different than a couch or a dog or a pen, and people said you can't change that. But some more enlightened among us started to think differently and to say no, that's not right and it shouldn't be, and it was an impossible obstacle to overcome in their minds. And they did. You know the elephant one bite at a time, right minds. And they did. You know the. The elephant, one bite at a time, right. But but they started to see I did the math, by the way, on how many people it takes to actually eat an elephant, how many bites, but the average I put that in a message somewhere um, it's not, it's not nearly as much. I think it was like one in every I don't know 15 people you meet on the street. If every one of them did it, in a short time you'd have the whole elephant eaten. So, and there's maybe that's an answer that you know. It seems impossible, but it is and it can be done. And because it has been done and it is not sufficient to say it's too big. You know patriarchal attitudes. You can't change the hell. You can't. You can, but everybody has to first come to see the problem before you can even begin to solve it. So what is the takeaway? Pay attention, read, talk, learn. I think storytelling is huge. I wish you could push it and, frankly, in the current era of technological achievement, I think you can almost push a button and talk to the entire world. Right, and there are those who have the ability to do that social media influencers and the like who go viral. This has to go viral somehow. Somehow. People need to understand that.

Bruce Bieber:

The police, who are the subject of so many fictional depictions movies, right, tv books, stories everybody thinks they know how to police better, even though they're not trained and they don't do the job. It's a tremendous job, not trained and they don't do the job, it's a tremendous job. But there's some sort of natural attraction to the world of police and I feel like they need to be married up somehow. If we so love Hill Street Blues or Homicide, life on the Streets or I don't know what the current ones might be movies, there's so so very many fictional depictions. So there's a natural societal attraction to police. How do you tap that and just tweak it just slightly to say yeah.

Bruce Bieber:

But there's this too, and there have been some critical, you know episodic examples, I suppose, of I don't know, serpico, right, a guy doing the right thing, but being sort of cast aside and trampled, and you know, does he win in the end? You know, maybe, maybe not, but I feel like there's a way to use technology. I don't know if it's AI, I don't know anything about AI, but somehow the world, what did you take away? You got to take away. It's a problem, I can tell you. I'm an expert on one thing and that is being the father of a daughter who was just erased like that. And that shouldn't be, it shouldn't happen, it is going to happen, it has happened.

Bruce Bieber:

And I mean, my wife and I lived an absolutely graced life and you know, abby was almost 31 when she was struck down. I talked to people who buried their children in infancy, in the toddlers, and you get into this really sick, macabre sort of oh, which is worse, to bury a child when they're, you know, two days old, two hours old, two weeks old, two months, two years, 20 years, 50 years, you know it's still your child, right, it's this, arguably you're bearing a child. But are they the same thing? Maybe, maybe not? Does it matter, maybe maybe not? Point of it is, we got through 30 plus years almost 31, of having three of the most wonderful children on earth. I'll never regret any of that. We weren't stricken with any number of afflictions, boards didn't fly off construction sites while walking in Manhattan, you know, and kill us.

Bruce Bieber:

I mean people get dead. Well, everybody gets dead. We know that. But a lot of people get dead in some crazy ways and we seem to live in a constant state of grace. You know we all graduated colleges. You know I've got grandchildren. Our lives were blessed and, yes, grandparents, parents, you know, aunts, uncles, friends died. Bad things happened, but this was a blow unlike any other blow and it's a unique blow. I can't even tell you how many other women are killed in OIDV cases. Data desert, right, they don't want to know that number. 1,000, 1,200 women a year are killed in femicides, but we don't know how many of those are killed by cops.

David Mandel:

If you were going to speak to beyond professionals, if you were going to speak to so that you know beyond professionals, if you were going to speak to survivors, somebody who might be listening, who might be in a similar situation. That, abby, was whether they're law enforcement themselves or not, and we know a lot of DOJD victims are law enforcement, like your daughter was or knows somebody you know who is who is being abused by law enforcement. Do you have a message out of out of your experience and out of your daughter's experience for them?

Bruce Bieber:

I do. And, um, I have a message for anybody who's a parent of any daughter. Frankly, whether they're in a bad situation or not, be aware of the indicators. Be aware of the warning signs of relationships that are heading in the wrong direction. I see them now in retrospect vis-a-vis Abby.

Bruce Bieber:

I didn't see him then. She was not subjected to the course of control. He was in the love bombing phase, a phrase I hadn't even heard. You know this abundance of affection and courtesy and all that nonsense. He was co-opting us, my wife and I, in the very house I'm sitting in. He came here bearing gifts to my grandchildren. You know, just getting the guard down, getting the target acquired. Really, it's a predator acquiring a target and I wasn't aware and sensitive to the known indicators.

Bruce Bieber:

An accelerated relationship. That was a huge thing for Abby. She kept pushing him back because he was picking out the drapes in the house they were going to live in forever and she was like dude, I might not even want to see you tomorrow, let alone next week or next year. And she kept. But she didn't know it either. So she was processing it. As he doesn't hear me, he doesn't listen to me, no, he was listening, he didn't care. He had his plan. She didn't recognize it was the accelerated relationship a common phenomenon with these predators, with these murderous folks who are going to do this if they execute their plan.

Bruce Bieber:

So what would I say to these people? The point of leaving is the most dangerous. Know that. Be very, very careful. If you're going to leave, you have to do that with a plan, and I'm not the guy to help you with that. But there are experts who know Find a family justice center, find a hotline, the domestic abuse hotline. Talk to somebody who does know how to get those plans together. And you guys know this. They have to be really, really well thought out and detailed to the nth degree. And that point, that period of the highest danger. You have to be aware of that. But there are others out there who will and can help you. Do reach out. There is no reason anybody should continue to suffer. In my mind, you don't deserve it. It is not your fault. This is the perpetrator's fault. You didn't do this. And that you find yourself seemingly powerless I guess I can understand that in an empathetic way, but it's not the case. You can't find the power to leave and you should.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

Bruce, I want to thank you so much for coming on and sharing Abby's story and sharing your family's story with such a tragic thing that should have not happened and that we can actually prevent if we take the right steps. And you know I have a lot of empathy in me for frontline workers who are constantly traumatized by their work. And I know there's a lot of other complicated issues here, including the proper support for people who are traumatized in the course of their jobs, not demonizing them, creating appropriate reporting pathways that are confidential, creating appropriate responses to people who engage in behaviors that may not broach criminal measures but which are really big red flags for criminal behavior. And engaging with behavior change that is actually impactful and does work in tracking that behavior change.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

Retention policies, hiring policies there's so many places we could go here, but ultimately, at the end of the day, I think we can all agree that we deserve justice and we deserve law enforcement agencies that are living the values that they say they're bringing to their communities. And if they're not bringing that value to their community, if they're draining our financial resources, if they're engaging in criminal behaviors and using law enforcement as a vehicle for that, it's an alarming concern to all of us, both for our safety, access to resources and justice, but also for security as communities, and that we have a responsibility bravely to address this, and so I hope that, in the memory of Abby, that we make a little headway wherever we can. So thank you for coming on Really appreciate it.

Bruce Bieber:

Thank you for having me. I'm grateful for the opportunity, yeah.

David Mandel:

Thank you, bruce, and to our listeners, we're going to leave some connections back to our other shows and the show notes on this topic. As always, if you want to learn more about the Institute, you can go to safertogetherinstitutecom or check out our online courses at academysafertogetherinstitutecom, and I believe otherwise, ruth.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

We are out.