Funding over for Police Response Advocacy Program

It’s getting harder to provide services through the Police Response Advocacy Program these days.
Funding for the program, which sent advocates out to scenes of domestic violence and sexual assault, lost its grant funding Tuesday.
The program was funded by a $400,000 grant every two years that had been renewed once. However, local officials had recently been informed that the grant would not be renewed and announced that news at Wednesday’s Crawford County Domestic Violence Task Force meeting. The last day of funding for the program was June 30.
Now, the Crisis Resource Center will attempt to take those calls on an on-call basis.
“Of course, as the economy has gone down, the incidences of domestic violence and sexual assault have been going up, while funding has generally been going down,” said Rebecca Reedy, task force chairwoman. “Certain sources of fundraising have been about half of what it was compared to the prior 12 months. There’s a possibility we will have to serve fewer victims in the future.”
Sheriff Sandy Horton said that the PRA program, in any form, has been a boost to the local community. He also coordinated with Reedy about who to call in the case of such incidents.
“I really think people that have seen the PRA program have benefited from it,” Horton said. “When it is used, it’s often used on the most difficult cases.”
Also at the task force meeting, County Attorney Michael Gayoso revealed to the group his guidelines for the prosecution of domestic battery. Each county attorney is required to come up with their own guidelines for prosecuting such cases.
Gayoso asked that the other members of the task force take a look at his guidelines and review them before the next task force meeting on October 6.
“You guys truly are the experts when it comes to this,” Gayoso said. “I’m an expert in the law, but you guys know how to better work with victims to get them to court. Anything to make these policies better, let me know.”
One suggestion Gayoso received was to host a Continuing Legal Education seminar for local attorneys and judges about the programs, services and techniques related to domestic violence.

Andrew Nash can be reached at andrew.nash@morningsun.net or by calling 231-2600 ext. 132.