Gloucester Twp. initiative targets domestic violence

Gloucester Township police have created a detective position dedicated to addressing domestic violence, part of an initiative town and Camden County officials announced Thursday.

The two detectives assigned to the domestic-violence beat, Eric Marconi and Dennis Richards, have been with the township police department for several years. On top of the investigative training all detectives most undergo, Marconi and Richards spent two weeks this summer in specialized domestic-violence training with the county Prosecutor's Office.

Their new role: Be a familiar face and advocate for victims, investigate abusers, connect victims with counseling and other resources, and monitor for repeat incidents.

"We're doing a lot more in-depth specialization with the victims, keeping contact with the victims and maintaining a better rapport after the initial investigation," Richards said. "It's not just finished after we sign a complaint. We follow through with the victim, address all their needs after the fact."

Project HIVIS, an acronym for Home-Involved Violence Intervention Strategies, is rooted in the research of a Temple University graduate student who worked as an intern for the department in 2013.

In New Jersey, acts of domestic violence occurred at the rate of every eight minutes and 14 seconds in 2013, according to the latest statistics available from the New Jersey State Police.

That year, there were 64,556 domestic-violence offenses; children were present in about a quarter of those incidents.

Camden County had the highest number of reported domestic-violence offenses of any county in New Jersey in 2013. The county, which has about 5.7 percent of the state's population, had about 8.7 percent of the domestic-violence offenses.

Gloucester Township had 443 reported offenses that year, a lower rate of offenses per population than statewide.

Rachel Hall, the Gloucester Township police intern, found that many of those domestic-violence cases the department handled involved households and abusers already known to it. In one case, police responded to seven offenses in the year leading up to an aggravated assault.

That research formed the basis for the domestic-violence project, which township Police Chief Harry Earle said was the first of its kind in the region.

Marconi and Richards will work to determine whether someone is likely to offend again by using a threat assessment and information from other groups - delinquency and truancy reports, for example.

After that, the police may step up their response, including increasing street patrols of a victim's home, checking in more often, and sending warning letters to offenders.

"Project HIVIS is not simply a domestic violence initiative," Earle said in a statement.

"It is violence prevention work, because we are not only responding to the domestic violence emergency, but we are partnering with many others in the community in treating the public health emergency that both causes domestic violence and continues its dangerous cycle," he said.

In November, Earle said, more officers will receive training in responding to domestic-violence incidents.

Among those at Thursday's news conference were members of the Girard family of Gloucester Township. Ginger Girard, mother of Aimée Girard, a nurse at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital who was shot and killed by a boyfriend in Philadelphia last year, said she hoped the program would expand to other areas.

"This is on the local level," she said. "I'm hoping that I can bridge this out and bring it outside of Gloucester Township, bringing it onto a state level and then bridge it into the Philadelphia region."

Aimée Girard's twin sister, Brittany, praised township police for focusing on domestic violence. "This is amazing," she said, "and on behalf of my family, I can't thank you all enough for stepping up to the plate."

jlai@phillynews.com

856-779-3220 @elaijuh