Podcast on Crimes Against Women
The Conference on Crimes Against Women (CCAW) is thrilled the announce the Podcast on Crimes Against Women (PCAW). Continuing with our fourth season, the PCAW releases new episodes every Monday. The PCAW serves as an extension of the information and topics presented at the annual Conference, providing in-depth dialogue, fresh perspectives, and relevant updates by experts in the fields of victim advocacy, criminal justice, medicine, and more. This podcast’s format hopes to create a space for topical conversations aimed to engage and educate community members on the issue of violence against women, how it impacts our daily lives, and how we can work together to create lasting cultural and systemic change.
Podcast on Crimes Against Women
From Tragedy to Legislation: How a Mother's Murder Changed Washington State's Domestic Violence Laws
What happens when protection orders fail? In November 2019, Tiffany Hill did everything by the book to protect herself from her abusive husband. She reported his violence, obtained no-contact orders, and worked closely with law enforcement. Yet she was still murdered in front of her children and mother while sitting in her car outside an elementary school.
Former Washington State Senator Lynda Wilson had already recognized this deadly gap in victim protection. Years before Tiffany's murder, Wilson had introduced legislation for GPS monitoring with real-time victim notification—a system that creates electronic "geofences" around domestic violence survivors. Had this technology been in place, Tiffany might have received a warning when her estranged husband approached, potentially saving her life.
This powerful episode brings together three key figures who transformed this tragedy into lifesaving change: Senator Wilson, whose own childhood experiences with domestic violence fueled her advocacy; Sergeant Tanya Wollstein of the Vancouver Police Department, who investigated Tiffany's case and now implements the monitoring program; and Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Lauren Boyd, who fought for higher bail to keep Tiffany's killer behind bars.
Their conversation reveals both the frustrating limitations of our current legal system—including Washington's constitutional "right to bail" that allowed Tiffany's killer to be released—and the promising results of the technology that now bears her name. Today, approximately 240 domestic violence offenders in Clark County wear ankle monitors that alert victims when their abuser comes within 1,000 feet, with early data showing reduced recidivism rates.
Through heartbreaking details of Tiffany's story and illuminating insights into how the justice system works (and sometimes doesn't), this episode offers a masterclass in turning personal tragedy into community protection. Listen now to understand how this groundbreaking approach to victim safety might be implemented in your community.
The subject matter of this podcast will address difficult topics multiple forms of violence, and identity-based discrimination and harassment. We acknowledge that this content may be difficult and have listed specific content warnings in each episode description to help create a positive, safe experience for all listeners.
Speaker 2:In this country, 31 million crimes 31 million crimes are reported every year. That is one every second. Out of that, every 24 minutes there is a murder. Every five minutes there is a rape. Every two to five minutes there is a sexual assault. Every nine seconds in this country, a woman is assaulted by someone who told her that he loved her, by someone who told her it was her fault, by someone who tries to tell the rest of us it's none of our business and I am proud to stand here today with each of you to call that perpetrator a liar.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the podcast on crimes against women. I'm Maria McMullin. In November of 2019, tiffany Hill was shot and killed by her estranged husband in front of her three children and her mother in the parking lot of the Children's Elementary School Leading up to the shooting. Investigators were aware that Tiffany was in extreme danger, with prosecutors requesting bail as high as $2 million after Hill's husband placed a GPS tracker on her car. Unfortunately, keelan Hill's bail was lowered to just $250,000, which he posted, and then, five days later, he killed Tiffany and himself. Curiously, in the background, washington state lawmakers were already working on legislation that could have saved Tiffany's life. Today, we talk with retired state Senator Linda Wilson, sergeant in the Vancouver Police Department, tonya Wallstein, and Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, lauren Boyd, who all were integral to the case of Tiffany Hill and the ultimate legislation in her name.
Speaker 1:Born in Spokane, washington, into an Air Force family, linda Wilson experienced life across the country before settling in Vancouver. While she never imagined herself in public office, she was driven by a sense of civic duty and a deep commitment to her community, and in 2013, she stepped into public service by running for the Washington State House of Representatives. The following year, she ran for, and secured a state senate seat representing Clark and Skamania counties, serving with distinction for eight years. Linda's advocacy for domestic violence victims became a hallmark for her legislative work and was rooted in personal experience. Having grown up in a household affected by abuse, she understood intimately the fear, instability and trauma that victims endure. That understanding fueled her determination to make a difference. In 2018, linda introduced legislation to allow electronic monitoring with real-time victim notification. Legislation to allow electronic monitoring with real-time victim notification, an innovative solution aimed at giving domestic violence victims a tool for safety and peace of mind. Although it faced setbacks in its early years due to funding concerns, it was unanimously approved in 2020 as the Tiffany Hill Act. Tragically, in late 2019, her community was shaken by the murder of Tiffany Hill, a young mother, veteran and domestic violence victim, who was killed by her estranged husband while sitting in her car outside of a school with her children in the back seat. Linda was devastated. She believed and still believes that had her proposed technology been in place, tiffany's life might have been spared.
Speaker 1:Tanya Wallstein is a sergeant with the Vancouver Police Department Domestic Violence Unit During her tenure in the DVU. Sergeant Wallstein is a sergeant with the Vancouver Police Department Domestic Violence Unit During her tenure in the DVU, sergeant Wallstein testified in support of the Tiffany Hill Act and continues to advocate for legislation promoting the safety of domestic violence victims. She is responsible for instituting Vancouver Police Department's lethality assessment for victims of DV, the development and implementation of Vancouver Police Department's sexual assault investigation policy and the Vancouver Police Department's patrol-based sexual assault investigator program. Sergeant Wallstein served as a board member of the Northwest Coalition Against Violence and Exploitation and provides domestic violence and sexual assault investigation training to law enforcement agencies and partners throughout the Northwest.
Speaker 1:Lauren Boyd has served as the appellate attorney at the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney's Office since 2015,. Serving as a trial advisor and appellate counsel, ms Boyd handled all manner of cases, from misdemeanors to major crimes, and served as the lead attorney for the Domestic Violence Unit during much of the COVID-19 pandemic. In that capacity, she became a senior deputy prosecuting attorney responsible for a team of attorneys, support staff and victim advocates tasked with prosecuting all levels of domestic violence crime and worked closely with the law enforcement partners. Ms Boyd also recently served on the board for the Washington State Bar Association and has been involved in advocating for laws and policies protecting domestic violence victims at both the community and state level.
Speaker 1:Tanya, lauren, linda, welcome to the show, thank you, thank you. So we're here to talk about the murder of Tiffany Hill, which happened several years ago in Washington State, and there is a lot to unpack with this case, as there typically is with this type of domestic violence homicide. So we're going to start at the beginning, or as far back at the beginning as we can, with you, tanya, talk about the history of domestic violence against Tiffany, including the arrests for assault, the violating of the no contact order and so on, because we want to get an understanding of what was happening to Tiffany Hill leading up to her murder.
Speaker 3:So on 9-11 of 2019 was the first call that the Clark County Sheriff's Office received from Tiffany's family and in that incident Keeland had attacked Tiffany, shoved her, causing her to hit her head against the wall, and she attempted to call 911 on her phone. He took her phone from her, she attempted to use the Alexa to call 911 and he unplugged it. So her children, who were hiding in their room, text their grandma help, help, help and said that Keeland was hurting Tiffany. So the grandmother called in Clark County Sheriff's Office deputies responded. They arrested Keelan for assault, for some misdemeanor, and took him to jail.
Speaker 3:A no contact order was put in place at that time. The no contact order prohibited him from having any contact with Tiffany, from coming within a specified distance of their home and from purchasing a firearm. Keelan, over the next couple of months, repeatedly violated this order. So the next call that we got was that she had received a phone call from Keelan. So Tiffany called in and said hey, he called, tried to FaceTime me, didn't answer. When the deputy spoke with Keelan he claimed that he was trying to just add the ice in case of emergency to her contact and that it was accidental and that he had not intended to contact Tiffany. So there was no arrest made at that time. No probable cause was found.
Speaker 3:He began showing up at places where Tiffany was, oftentimes for PTA meetings. She was very involved with her kids' school and a big part of the PTO that was there at the Sarah J Anderson, and the first time he showed up they were at a restaurant having a meeting. He showed up as if to get food briefly left came back in a second time. Then, when she left in the parking lot he approached her and tried to talk to her and the kids. She told the kids to run and get in the car and then, when Keelan saw that she was there with friends, broke off and ran away and the deputies responded again they did find probable cause for an order violation. However, keelan was not found at that time.
Speaker 1:So police could not find him after that happened.
Speaker 3:Right, the police could not find him immediately after that incident. So although now there is probable cause for an arrest, keelan's location was unknown. But within a couple of days they did get Keelan on the phone. Keelan claimed that he had been at the bowling alley next door, that he just went in to get some food, that he basically wasn't making an intentional contact and that he just wanted to say hi to his kids, which he technically would have been allowed to because the kids were not part of the no contact order, because they were not named victims in the case and I'll let Lauren talk about that a little more later. But they still found probable cause but Keelan wouldn't say where he was and he wasn't able to be found at that time.
Speaker 3:It continued and there were multiple incidents that were reported. In one of the incidents, keelan attempted to purchase a firearm out of Multnomah County. So Vancouver Washington is a border city right next to Portland, so it literally goes Portland Bridge Vancouver. So essentially we end up being a suburb. But it's challenging because they are a completely different state and a completely different jurisdiction with different rules and laws and all those things. So when he attempted to purchase a firearm.
Speaker 3:The employee at the Walmart that he attempted to purchase it from in Multnomah County did the right thing, denied his purchase and reported it to the police there. The police there did find probable cause for an attempted purchase of a firearm unlawfully. However, keelan was gone and that's a misdemeanor and it's not typically something that they would run a warrant across state lines to go get him for. So now we know that we've got all this danger going on. We've got him showing up at places. We've got him attempting phone contact. We didn't know at that time, but he was constantly texting Tiffany throughout this time as well, and that was later reported. He's now attempting to purchase a firearm in violation of the no contact order. And then he showed up again at another restaurant that Tiffany was at with again the.
Speaker 3:PTO. And this time her friends really advocated for her and she advocated for herself and said he has to be tracking me in some way, right, and they did find a tracker on her car. At that point they were able to locate Keelan. They did arrest Keelan, they seized his vehicle and they later searched it with a search warrant and found packaging and other things that showed ownership of the tracking device on the car. At that point other charges were added that he hadn't been found for before and he had another hearing. Ultimately he was able to bail out. And when he bailed out Ultimately he was able to bail out. And when he bailed out, there was another order violation that was reported. The officer from VPD at that time did not find probable cause for a third-party contact or for a direct contact and he wasn't arrested.
Speaker 3:And then, just a few short days later all of this happened within a couple of months she was at her children's elementary schools and celebrating her youngest daughter's birthday. There was a safety plan in place and she had a security guard that was dedicated to kind of watch over her. But because she had stayed later and the school was closed, the security guard had gone home. So when they left the school. Keelan had been waiting in the parking lot for about 20 minutes. She had her mother had flown down and was with her trying to work through the situation. All of us had encouraged her to go back with her family that lived on the East Coast and that was something that they were kind of trying to work through.
Speaker 3:Tiffany really didn't want to take the kids out of school and her whole community was this school and this PTO and her children and she was very reluctant to leave all of that, even though she knew that Keelan would try to kill her. When they got into the car, keelan pulled forward, got out of the car, displayed a gun, shot several times through the windows of the car, striking both Tiffany and her mother, who had reached over in a protective gesture, like you would in a car, trying to instinctively block the bullets. So her mom was shot, she was shot several times and the kids were all in the car. They were luckily not shot. It appeared that his firearm malfunctioned from the security video and he left and led the police on a chase. Eventually the pursuit ended when he got stuck in traffic and he got out of his car and turned the gun on himself.
Speaker 1:That's an incredible story. Thank you for giving us that level of detail. I have so many questions about the story and about everything that you said. Do you have an idea of what the domestic violence experiences were prior to Tiffany and her family arriving in Vancouver?
Speaker 3:There was a history of domestic violence between Tiffany and Keelan and there had been serious charges filed in another state. But, as often happens in domestic violence cases, keelan had convinced Tiffany to recant her statement and they had dropped the charges, and I believe that was in Michigan. I know that she had. There was more history that we don't even know about because it had never been reported, and she spoke with Lauren and I about this when she met with us. It's just a dynamic of DV that we hear so often, that cases are dropped that really shouldn't be dropped because they feel like they can't be prosecuted correctly, because the victim is no longer willing to prosecute. But there had been a history of abuse throughout their marriage and even serious abuse, including strangulation, throughout the time that they had been married.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think part of the story was that she suffered a concussion in one of these incidents and law enforcement was not aware that she had the concussion.
Speaker 3:So in that very first incident he was initially arrested for an assault for which is a misdemeanor assault. This is in Vancouver.
Speaker 1:In.
Speaker 3:Vancouver, and when she got medical treatment they were able to provide medical records showing that she had all the signs of a concussion. So that charge was later upgraded which Lauren can speak to a little bit more to an assault too, which is a felony assault charge at that point due to the concussion.
Speaker 1:So, lauren, let's turn to you as the prosecutor at these hearings for Keelan Hill. Let's talk a little bit about the charges that were brought against him, what the process was, what was available to you as a prosecutor, maybe what tools were at your disposal to keep him in prison or away from Tiffany, and then we'll also talk about how the system failed, your efforts as well as Tiffany.
Speaker 4:Sure. So I think it's important to note that Washington is what's called a right to a bail state. That's where I really put one of the major fails in the system, especially when we're talking about domestic violence. Defendants who are charged with crimes not yet convicted of crimes, have the right to bail the prosecutor in cases of Class A felonies, which are super serious felonies. Keelan hadn't, at any of the time that he was in Washington, committed a Class A felony against Tiffany up until the point when he murdered her. Obviously, the prosecutor can ask a judge to hold somebody without bail if they've committed a Class A felony, but Keelan hadn't committed that. Also, if somebody violates their supervised release, the prosecutor could make a motion saying this person is out of custody pending trial. They violated the conditions of that release pending trial and now you can judge can you please hold this person? But short of that, in Washington state offenders have a right to bail and so when we're in cases this super dynamic and dangerous domestic violence cases because of the system, we have no ability to actually hold someone in custody pending trial. In my opinion, that's the only way we can 100% be sure that the offender isn't going to go and kill their victim. So the other tools that we have are no contact orders. We have the ability, through no contact orders, to limit the offender's ability to purchase own touch firearms, but of course, we need to rely on that being reported to us. We can't actually stop that on the front end, right, it's just back-end investigation once they've tried to purchase a firearm. At the time we didn't have the technology to have the GPS tracking which we do have now. So I think that in Washington, victims are safer because of that technology. 2018, 2019, we didn't have that technology though.
Speaker 4:So when Keelan was first arrested on the misdemeanor assault charge, he was also charged with interference with reporting of domestic violence. We couldn't ask to hold him in custody because he had that right to bail. It's pretty common that we don't have medical records at the time because the victim hasn't seen a doctor yet or the records haven't made it to my office. I can't charge, even if I suspect that the victim might have a concussion. I can't charge that ethically unless I have the evidence that I think will prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury that fact. So that's why the assault crime took a little while to be elevated to a felony assault, because I didn't yet have the evidence of her concussion that I needed to be able to elevate it. So originally he was just charged with a misdemeanor. After the report started coming out and the stalking report came in, he did get charged with felony stalking. That was a new crime. That was charged in our Superior Court in Washington. In Washington the Superior Court handles felonies, district Court handles misdemeanors.
Speaker 1:The stalking was, as a result of putting the tracker on her car, correct.
Speaker 4:The tracker on her car and at that point we had the information of all the other activities a lot of the other activities, I should say not all of the other activities leading up. So stalking is kind of a course of conduct Right Crime, the tracker being, I guess, the ultimate evidence that he's intending to stalk her. So we charged him with a felony. Tiffany came into my office and met with me and our victim advocate. She was very proactive. She'd hired her own attorney. She was really advocating.
Speaker 4:I asked Tanya, who works down the hallway from me or did at the time, to come interview Tiffany and take the reports of all these additional crimes that Keelan had committed. When he was charged with the stalking that's when we elevated the misdemeanor assault to a felony assault He'd originally been given about $75,000 bail. Again, he hadn't yet violated his supervised release on this new felony crime and so he still has the right to bail under Washington law. There's about a two-week period between when he makes the first appearance in superior court on the now felony charges and when when he's arraigned, that's when someone pleads guilty or not guilty. During that time is when we had met with Tiffany, gathered this additional evidence.
Speaker 4:I filed a motion before his arraignment to raise his bail. Because, with all of this new information that we're gathering from Tiffany, $75,000 just doesn't cover the very, very serious and dangerous nature of Keelan and his crimes. So I filed a motion to raise bail. The judge at his arraignment tripled the bail to $250,000, which is a high amount of bail that we'd get in Vancouver for, again, crimes that aren't class A felonies that someone still has the right to bail in the state he, in my opinion. I didn't think that he would be able to bail out with that high amount, but he was able to bail out and that's how he had access to Tiffany when he murdered her.
Speaker 1:How did he get access to the firearm?
Speaker 4:The firearm was stolen.
Speaker 3:I'm not sure the exact facts of how he got his hands on it so we weren't able to pin down exactly where it was. But the firearm had been reported stolen two years before out of Oregon, so it had likely bounced around quite a bit Prior to the murder. He had been asking friends and family like hey, can I borrow your gun? I want to take my wife shooting. We're going to. We're trying to like reconcile and you know we used trying to like reconcile and you know we used to be in the military, so we just want to go to the shooting range. No one loaned him a gun, but he was able to get his hands on the stolen gun that had been out there a couple of years.
Speaker 4:Wow. He had all sorts of stories on why he needed a gun at Walmart. When he'd been denied again, he told the clerk there that he'd had some vermin on his property that he needed to get rid of. So I think he had all these efforts trying to manipulate others.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it sounds very much like this was a plan that he set in motion kind of rapidly for one reason or another. Lauren, a lot of what you just explained to us was very dependent upon conditions in the no contact order, as well as bail and what you know, the right to bail state. How does what happened in Vancouver with this particular case? Are there other states that set a better example of what to do with this particular type of perpetrator under these types of circumstances?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's a really good question and I don't know the answer to that. I will say I mean, my biggest takeaway about the failure of the system is Washington's right to bail in dangerous circumstances Like, for example, DV circumstances. That is in the Washington state constitution. The right to bail is actually in the constitution. I'm not aware if there's other states that have it in their constitution. I'm just, I'm an expert in Washington law, not other states laws. That is. The biggest hurdle is to change this in Washington state. We actually have to make a constitutional amendment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well good luck with that.
Speaker 3:For us Article 1, section 20 is where that lies, and actually Senator Wilson did run a bill trying to put that on the ballot for like a referendum.
Speaker 5:Senator. Yeah, I just I did because I heard from these two that that was a impediment right to trying to figure out what's happening with these domestic violence laws and how to make them better. And so I did run the constitutional amendment and I ran the bill that coincides with that. So you have to run the bill and amendment, because the amendment goes to the people and then the people are allowed to determine whether they want that in the Constitution or not. But neither the constitutional amendment or the bill ever got a hearing.
Speaker 1:Wow. My takeaway from this is that right to bail, being a right to bail state, can be very harmful in specific cases, this being a prime example of when that might lead to some the murder of an intimate partner. Now I want to also ask you, lauren, a little bit about the no contact orders that were involved in this situation, because apparently I guess I don't understand how it works. So the no contact or protective order is Halen cannot have any contact with Tiffany and yet he can see his children. How does that work, or how is that possible?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think that they can be difficult to enforce, which is another problem with the system. But the no contact order essentially will enumerate a bunch of activities that he is not allowed to participate in. So that's direct contact with Tiffany, third party contact with Tiffany. So he can't ask someone to tell Tiffany something or to get information from her. That would include a distance from her home or her that he wouldn't have been able to go into. Tiffany was the name victim in this case, so the order protected her, but it didn't list any of her children. So he could still have had contact with his children. So Tiffany's children were rather young when this happened. But, for example, if the children were teenagers and they had cell phones, a no contact order like this wouldn't prevent the offender from texting their child on their cell phone, as long as he wasn't then asking his child to go convey information to the victim or to ask the victim any questions or to try to contact the victim through the child.
Speaker 1:Is there a better way that that order could have been constructed that could have better protected her?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1:The reason I asked it is because people listening may have ideas about how to do it, and so I wasn't sure if we could give them an example or an idea of like a different way to put this protective order together, because the three main audience is law enforcement, prosecutors and advocates.
Speaker 4:Right. Well, I think one of the things that we can do is try to get children as protected parties in orders too. Sometimes it's difficult in the criminal realm, at least in Washington, to protect family members if they're not the named victim. It's not impossible, but it can be more difficult. We can always be encouraging victims to go seek their own civil protection order, be encouraging victims to go seek their own civil protection order. Obviously, the children witnessed at least the original assault, and so they were impacted by this violence too, and so getting a civil protection order which my office can't do for someone, but we could explain to them how to go get that done could include the children as protected parties. I think we need more education too, for just everyone involved, including the public, that when an offender shows up to a place where the protected party is and says, oh, I'm not here to see the protected party, I'm just here to see my children, that's a violation, and so I think, it's both the way the order's structured and the way the order's interpreted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because abusers will do that. They will use any aspect that they can to leverage things on their you know, so that they win, so that they get access, so that they get what they want, and you see it every day, I'm sure Now it also seems that Tiffany had been doing everything she could to protect herself and her children. She reported to police, she filed a protective order, and yet it wasn't enough to save her life. What happened here? Can anybody answer? Like, what really went wrong? I mean, she did everything by the book, so I guess it was the legislation that failed her in some way, right, senator? The one that could have been in place, that you had worked on years before, could have been in place, that you had worked on years before.
Speaker 4:So let's talk about the legislation that you worked on. Can I just interrupt? Yes, I think there's failures in the system that absolutely we can fix to protect victims. Also, I think that offenders are going to show us where holes in the system are. So try as we might to create the perfect system to protect everyone. I think it's important that we remember just how dangerous these domestic violence offenders are, especially in cases like this, where, in my mind, he's singularly focused on hurting his family, that I'm not sure that there's a system that we can put in place that's going to protect everybody. I'm not sure there's a system we could have put in place that would 100% have protected Tiffany.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hear what you're saying and I know that's unfortunate. It's just. It just seems like in a perfect world where, if you follow the rules according to what's in place to protect you as a woman who is a victim of domestic violence, you would think that you would be safe. It's unfortunate.
Speaker 5:Criminals don't follow the rules. Of course, right and what killed her was the gun that he stole. He knew he wasn't supposed to get a gun, but he stole one anyway and that's what killed her. So we have laws that say you can't murder your spouse. We do, but it doesn't matter, right? It doesn't matter when you I mean to someone who's hell-bent on doing this.
Speaker 1:Yes, Absolutely Excellent point. So tell us about the bill you worked on and ultimately passed, so in 2017,.
Speaker 5:I was at coffee with my middle daughter and she watches a lot of these shows and she said hey, mom, there's a bill in Maryland that was passed in 2013. And she explained the bill to me and it was very similar to what I had. And she brought this to me because she knew of the history, my history, which was I grew up in a family where I was witness to domestic violence, as far back as I can remember, pretty much on a daily basis. So she knew where I was coming from and brought the bill and I said you know, that's a really good idea. So I started doing the research and decided that this was something I wanted to do. This is not why I came to the legislature, but here it was, so I had to. The laws in Maryland are different than the laws in Washington, so I had to make sure that what we were doing would work. So I started off with this particular technology and found that this is electronic monitoring with real-time victim notification. So, to explain what it is, it's an ankle bracelet that's put on the abuser, perpetrator and the victim then would have either a smartwatch or an iPhone or some such, and when there would be a geofence around the person, the victim, wherever she went, right. So it's not just like a protective order or a piece of paper that says don't come to their work, don't come to their home, don't go to their schools, it's wherever they are. So it gives them a sense of at least a little bit of peace to know that, wherever they are, this person is at least a thousand feet away from them at any time. This particular bracelet is very difficult to remove, if at all. It has a two-way communication so that if there was ever a hostage situation and the perpetrator would not answer the phone for negotiation, they could speak to them through the ankle monitor, and it also has an alarm on it that if, in any case, law enforcement wanted to use it, it's about as loud as a fire truck is what I've been told. I may be wrong, but that's what I was told. So, anyway, at that point, Illinois had about 500 people on this particular technology and New Zealand was also, so I worked through the law. That was in 2017.
Speaker 5:I ran the bill in 2018 and it failed, and I did have some pushback on that. We have what's called WASPIC, which is the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, and they had concerns, liability, right, and what if the technology failed? Then what would happen? And they just were not on board. I really had to work on them to get on board with this because of that type of thing. He didn't want the victim to not ever be vigilant, it's like, but they're always going to be vigilant regardless, right? But this gave them an option if to have a little piece, even if it failed and failing right now. With the GPS, I understood that it really rarely failed and since 2013, GPS has gotten far better than you know than it was that many years ago. Either way, it failed in 2018. So I ran it again in 2019. And it failed again. And so there was always some obstacle, or they just weren't interested in passing the bill.
Speaker 5:And then in November of 2019, that's when I was watching the news and I saw how Tiffany Hill had been murdered by her husband. It was a textbook case for this bill the fact that he sat in wait for her 20 minutes before he pulled in front of her, got out of the car, shot her back to the car. I mean all of this right. If she had this technology, we believe that she would be alive today, because he either wouldn't have been there because he would know that he was being tracked, or Tiffany would have time to go back into the school. The school got into lockdown. She could have called the police. So many options for her. Because so many times in these cases it is the element of surprise right for the victim. This takes away at least even if minutes it takes away the element of surprise for that victim. They have time to think the alarm's gone off. He's close to me or she. I always have to qualify that. It isn't always the man and the woman.
Speaker 5:It typically is, but they would have time to gather their thoughts. What do I do with my children? Can I call the police? Should I just leave? I mean, even in that instance, as he was driving toward her, if she had driven off it probably would have a different outcome.
Speaker 1:She would have had time to react. But, to your point, the element of surprise does make all the difference and I think it's an amazing and genius idea to be able to monitor and geofence a person for their own personal safety. It's unfortunate that then you know people have to be still be tracked because they're unsafe and so they have to have this bubble around them and, you know, just be protected that way. But it does offer, to your point, some measure, some additional layer of protection. Now, since it was passed it was passed in 2020, correct. How effective has this been? Has it been utilized in the state of Washington?
Speaker 5:It has in Clark County for the most part, which is these gals. I mean, the reason why it is the gold standard, I believe, in our state is because they put so much time, energy and research for months into this before they actually started using it to make sure that it was doing what it was supposed to be doing and had less errors, if any.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 5:So they wanted to perfect it to the point it could be perfected before we even started using it, and it is my understanding that there's been over 600 people since then and currently a couple of hundred. It was just in Clark County.
Speaker 3:Yes, people since then and currently a couple of hundred. It was just in Clark County. Yes, last year we had about in total of approximately 680 offenders on the program during the year. Right now, any given day, we have approximately 240 offenders on average. So on any given day, 240 domestic violence offenders in Clark County, washington, are on offender monitoring with victim notification. What we've seen we have a study being commissioned right now but it's still in progress, but we have seen reduced rates of recidivism, at least in-person recidivism, which is the most dangerous kind.
Speaker 3:We also have some anecdotal things that really help us know like this is working. So we had an instance where the offender is given a map and it has a big red circle and it says you can't go here. And that's important for prosecution because otherwise they'll say I didn't know that the street was within a thousand feet of a residence, whatever else. And we say did you sign this paper with a pretty picture? Right? I go yeah, we did. Yeah, you knew you weren't supposed to be there. So he sat in what we call a buffer zone, which is just an extra zone to give the victim extra time and warning. It's not a violation of the order to be there, but it's an extra thousand feet on top of whatever's in the order To give the victim a little bit more notification. This offender is coming closer. So this particular gentleman sat in the buffer zone tampering with his bracelet, texting her that he was going to come to get her. But because he tampered with the bracelet, we were called and we picked him up.
Speaker 3:We had a less fortunate situation where we had an offender who wore the bracelet for about six months while he was on pretrial release. He was given credit time served as far as his sentence and the bracelet was taken off and then he went home and he murdered his wife, murdered himself in front of their two children. We have a third instance where we had a double homicide that was involved child. It was very upsetting. It's a domestic violence situation. But that offender on his jail call said I wish they would have given me that ankle bracelet thing because then I never would have gone over there.
Speaker 3:Now take that for what it's worth. This is from someone who's committed multiple homicides, but it is. It does show us that this is something that offenders think about and it's sort of the policeman at your shoulder argument. Would you do it with a policeman at your shoulder, and it's the same thing. So this calls police. If the offender enters a zone around the schoolhouse, anything that's in the order, then the police are called. It's not just the victim getting notified, the police are notified and they respond to this as well. So there's an additional layer of protection there for victims. If it's a static zone what we call a static zone, where it's a place that never moves we're called and we're dispatched out to this order. We have the ability to see where the offender is.
Speaker 1:With over 200 at any given time on this monitor in just one county, which is remarkable in itself. Just the number is so high. What type of resources would a police department need to respond to that potential level of violation?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's a really interesting thing because that's an objection that's come up sometimes. Right, we're in Washington State and we're in Clark County. So out of the states in the United States, we're 50th in number of police officers per capita and Clark County is the least in Washington State, so we're dead last in staffing. Wow, this has not been an issue. We had approximately 200 calls last year with 600 and some odd offenders that were on the program total last year. And keep in mind that 240 is a daily number, so that's just average per day. So we'll probably have closer to 800 or 1000.
Speaker 3:But it's a deterrent. So what's great is that we see much less in-person recidivism. But also it's not like a cell phone. So I think a lot of for cops out there. A lot of times we think of like when we write a warrant for somebody's cell phone and it gives us a ping for 3000 meters and we're like, awesome, they're somewhere in the city. That's really helpful finding them.
Speaker 3:That is not how this works. So when it is working with a high fix, which is the vast majority of the time, it's accurate to within 15 feet. So I've literally followed across the city and to the parking space he was in. That's how good it is. So instead of wasting time trying to check addresses and running around the city doing all these things that we normally do trying to find an offender, we just go to where he is. We log into the system. Every officer just has a login. They log in, they put it in what we call pursuit mode. So pursuit mode takes the location pings from every one minute apart to every 15 to 20 seconds apart. Every 15 to 20 seconds we get a new ping.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's like turn-by-turn directions to get to this person.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the app actually has turn-by-turn directions just to follow to the offender. It's something that I think actually saves resources. It's been popular with defendants because it's a least restrictive alternative. It's not EHM in a typical sense, so they're not on house arrest, they can go to their job, they can do things that they need to do Stay away from the person they're supposed to stay.
Speaker 3:They just have to stay out of a thousand feet, which is apparently harder than it is for some of our offenders. However, it's a program that they have asked for. We had some concerns about defense and whether or not they're gonna try to fight this program. What we actually see is that offenders prefer to have monitoring and be out of custody than they would to like an EHM house arrest program or being actually physically in custody.
Speaker 1:So if someone creates a violation by going within a thousand feet of the person they're supposed to stay away from, what's the response to the violation?
Speaker 3:The protocol for a static zone, which would be homeschool work, something that's listed as a static location in the order. If that happens, the first thing that happens is dispatch is called by our monitoring center and they're the people that work the bracelets. They call dispatch, they report through a script, essentially a restraining order in progress. Dispatch dispatches officers out. The officer logs in. They start looking for the offender. Secondarily, after that call is done, they activate the alarm on the offender's bracelet, which is a 95 decibel siren. After that they call into the bracelet, the monitoring center, saying you need to not be in the zone, you're in. That's a recorded call. It can be used in court and they'll record whatever he says, pound sand, whatever he happens to say, and that's recorded. So all of those things kind of happen in succession on a static order.
Speaker 3:Now, on a mobile zone, which would be the app on the victim's phone that goes with the victim wherever the victim is, the protocol is a little bit different and there were a couple of reasons for that. We leave it to the victim and the victim is educated on this in Clark County to call. Two reasons One, I don't want the offender to go to drive by mom's house, drive by sister's house, drive by sister's house, drive by friend's house and try to find when his bracelet goes off. And now he knows where she is. But it's not an order violation, because he didn't make contact with her, he didn't know she was there, all those kinds of things. So I don't want him to use this sort of as a geolocation device in reverse. And then, secondarily is sort of unintended contact I'm driving up I-5, she's driving down I-5. There was no actual contact, no intended contact.
Speaker 2:No, they were there, yeah, those kinds of things and those do happen.
Speaker 3:You know, vancouver is not an extremely large place. So just that incidental contact where, like, there actually wasn't any contact or any intention of contact. So in those cases for the mobile zone, it is up to the victim to call the police. So those are the two sort of systems that we have, that that works through.
Speaker 1:When there is a violation that's found, what's the response to it? As far as?
Speaker 3:charges being filed. The charge would be violation of a domestic violence no contact order In Washington state. If they have two prior convictions it's a felony, if not, it's a misdemeanor. There's additional stalking in violation of an order which we might have if we have several violations, kind of thing. So they could end up with a felony stalking charge as well. But it's either a misdemeanor no contact order violation, or if they have the two prior convictions, it would be a felony no contact order violation. And if there's PC for stalking, stalking in violation of a no contact order would then be a felony stalking case as well. So it kind of depends on your circumstances, but you're always going to have a violation of the domestic violence no contact order as part of your charges.
Speaker 1:Have you found, lauren, that this process having this ankle monitor and you know all of the things that Tanya just mentioned that go along with it helpful to prosecuting some of these cases? Yeah, I found it extremely helpful.
Speaker 4:I think one of the important things when prosecuting these cases is to be able to educate the jury about the cycle of violence and the dynamics that happen in these domestic violence cases.
Speaker 4:You know violence that happens for the crime that's charged, say the underlying assault. That's not the first time or the only violence that the victims experienced at the hands of the perpetrator, and if that's the only information that we're putting in front of the jury, I think we are getting better as a society at understanding domestic violence dynamics. I don't think everyone understands domestic violence dynamics and so if the jury doesn't understand that this assault happened in the context of this whole dynamic relationship, I don't think the jury is armed with the information or the education to make the most correct decision on that case. So when we have, in the event that the offender does violate the no contact order and we have no contact orders in addition to the underlying assault on these cases, that's one way that we can show the jury exactly what this domestic violence relationship looks like for these two people. So I think it ends up with the jury making better decisions on each individual case.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's definitely makes sense. And then finally, what's next for this legislation? Kind of, are you doing any research to measure how effective it is using the ankle monitor and so on?
Speaker 3:We've partnered with Washington State Alice hi, alice, if you're listening, she is a PhD who's taking all of the data from our program. We've now been up and running three and a half years, so we have a decent enough sample size to make a good study. There is other research that's out there that shows overall reduced recidivism in these kind of programs, but this will be a Clark County specific study. We're in the beginning phases and still getting all the permissions and things like that. But we hope to have a research paper out on our program and the effectiveness and the reduced recidivism and also if there's reduced recidivism for other crimes.
Speaker 3:You know, one of the things that's nice about this as well is that if the suspect has committed another kind of crime, this can also be used to place them at the location of the crime. So, for example, there was a carjacking in Portland. They came across the bridge at 120 miles an hour in the carjacked car, which we know because he had an ankle bracelet. Those kinds of things. It's helpful in many different ways. A lot of times when you have EHM sort of situations, no one's monitoring EHM they're on house arrest. There's not really this high level of monitoring. So it's very helpful and I did just want to touch on. So, as far as monitoring the victim's location, I know there are privacy concerns about that, so law enforcement is only able to see victim location when they are within one half mile of the offender. Okay, so other than that, we are not able, I'm not even able to see where the victim is the rest of the time, and I wouldn't want to be tracked by law enforcement either as a victim. Sure, but the only time we can see is when they get that close, and the reason that it's that and not the actual order is we need to be able to prove who went to who and how people got there. Right, Because the offender is always going to give us something that's probably not true and we can show.
Speaker 3:I think you know, to talk a little bit to Lauren's point, juries like to have maps and data and geofence points. They like that kind of information as well, and so I think it's very helpful to go here's a paper he signed saying he couldn't go there with a picture of this. Here's where he was, here's where they were and go through all of that information. It's very factual and very data-based. It's not somebody's, you know, what the jury might view as an opinion. It's all very hard evidence data and we have a great company that comes in and they're happy to testify in court on our behalf to the validity of the data as well.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's amazing. I look forward to reading the findings of this study. Any other legislation that you can point to in the state of Washington that supports victims of domestic violence well, that others should be aware of Well there are bills that are trying to run.
Speaker 5:There's training for judges, right so that the judges are a little bit more aware of domestic violence, how it works, how it plays out. Apparently, there's very little training for judges in this scenario. I actually had a bill that would establish a judicial sentencing database for judges. So in this case Lauren's example she asked for a $2 million bail. They started out at $75,000. It got to $250,000, but he didn't accept it. The judge did not accept the $2 million, right. So I thought that a database so accountability and transparency for the public to know how many times do judges not do what the prosecutor recommends? Right? And again, that bill didn't get a hearing. It didn't go anywhere.
Speaker 5:So I did get a bill passed in 2022, allowing victims and or survivors of victims to be able to speak at the sentencing hearings. Up until that point, it was only felony cases, but now domestic violence cases, they can speak on behalf of either the victim or the surviving victim. So we actually had to run a bill so that they could actually be allowed to speak, so that that did pass. And I mean, some of these seem very trivial, but when you get down to it, the ability for someone to speak, so that did pass, and I mean, some of these seem very trivial, but when you get down to it, the ability for someone to speak on their behalf is kind of cathartic, right? Sometimes.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Allowing survivors to use their voices or, if the survivor cannot, family members and loved ones of those victims of domestic violence to use their voices, is critical to making people aware of the severity of domestic violence and what actually leads up to things like Tiffany Hill's murder. It wasn't just the fact that he acquired a gun and decided to kill her one day. There were years and years of a pattern of abuse that went on before this happened. I appreciate your advocacy for women who are victims of domestic violence and I thank all of you for talking with me today, thank you, thank you. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe.
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