When your wife is arrested?

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BioCatholic

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ive been married about 2.5 yrs, and I am a student as well as a volunteer police officer and paramedic for my county. what it boils down to is when coming home from a police duty shift, my wife met me at the door yelling and ready to fight about something. after we got in, it turned ugly, and i said some things i probably shouldnt have, so she hit me with a frying pan and split my forehead open.

now the thing is, florida has a domestic violence law that absolutely requires jail time for spousal assault, as well as the fact our county considers a person a sworn officer until they come home from shift and call dispatch to say they have arrived home safely (to make sure some whacko we arrested doesnt shoot us in our driveway and we’re not found till next day)

i made it to my neighbor’s house down the street, another police officer, and because i was still “on duty” and VERY angry, i arrested my wife for both spousal assault and aggravated assult on a police officer.

my wife pleaded down to avoid 15 years in prison, but she will end up serving 5 years before its over. through it all, my local church community has given me no support whatsoever, and consider ME in the wrong because i arrested, filed charges and testified to a grand jury against her. somehow i think that they consider my actions are breaking the marital bond, and i should have turned the other cheek. now i did testify again at the sentencing reccomendation hearing (very angrily and out of spite), and the testimony most definitely extended her sentence.

my ? is, am i in the wrong for what i did? “Render unto Caeser…” state laws ect. and so forth? i really dont feel all that bad about it, i arrest people who commit similar crimes all the time. But what does the church really say about something like this?
 
I’m not sure what the church says officially about this sort of thing, if anything but I know what the Bible says about loving your spouse.

I think you would have been hypocritical to do anything else and should rest easy about your actions. Hopefully your wife will have learned something.
 
Is this for real?! I have to seriously wonder about your “marital bond” if the two of you are arguing to the point of bashing one another in the head with frying pans and arresting/testifying against each other in court. If this is a demonstration of your conflict resolution skills at work you may want to reconsider your role in law enforcement. Sign up for some intensive individual and couples thereapy–it sounds as if you both could use it.
 
Abuse is abuse, no matter the gender. I don’t have any more sympathy for a woman that hits her husband then a man that hits his wife. She needed to be arrested, hopefully she will recieve help.

I have noticed that people who get into violent relationships tend to be attracted to men/women who are abusive. Perhaps it might help if you, personally, sought therapy to figure out what attracted you to her in the first place.

It doesn’t matter what name you called her, hitting your spouse is a betrayal of the marriage vows to honor one another. Did your wife have anger problems before? How did her parents treat one another?

I have heard of fundamentalists urging people to remain in abusive and even dangerous marriages. I have never heard of the same thing happening in a Catholic marriage. It isn’t that I am advocating divorce, just that you take steps to protect yourself.
 
Not calling you a liar but that is hard to believe. If it is true then you weren’t very merciful in trying to extend her sentence. If its not true it would make a great comedy skit for mad tv. If my wife hit me I wouldn’t be able to hide behind the badge. I would probably have called the police for assault charges though.
 
Island Oak:
Is this for real?! I have to seriously wonder about your “marital bond” if the two of you are arguing to the point of bashing one another in the head with frying pans and arresting/testifying against each other in court. If this is a demonstration of your conflict resolution skills at work you may want to reconsider your role in law enforcement. Sign up for some intensive individual and couples thereapy–it sounds as if you both could use it.
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They weren’t bashing one another. She hit him. there was only one frying pan.
Given the fact that if she had swung a bit harder, or turned the pan 90 degrees she would be looking at a murder charge, it would appear that while he did extremely poorly in getting her settled to the point of a rational discussion, she is liable for deadly assault charges.
 
that aggrevated assault on a police officer is lame.

You were not acting in that capacity.
 
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BioCatholic:
ive been married about 2.5 yrs, and I am a student as well as a volunteer police officer and paramedic for my county. what it boils down to is when coming home from a police duty shift, my wife met me at the door yelling and ready to fight about something. after we got in, it turned ugly, and i said some things i probably shouldnt have, so she hit me with a frying pan and split my forehead open.

now the thing is, florida has a domestic violence law that absolutely requires jail time for spousal assault, as well as the fact our county considers a person a sworn officer until they come home from shift and call dispatch to say they have arrived home safely (to make sure some whacko we arrested doesnt shoot us in our driveway and we’re not found till next day)

i made it to my neighbor’s house down the street, another police officer, and because i was still “on duty” and VERY angry, i arrested my wife for both spousal assault and aggravated assult on a police officer.

my wife pleaded down to avoid 15 years in prison, but she will end up serving 5 years before its over. through it all, my local church community has given me no support whatsoever, and consider ME in the wrong because i arrested, filed charges and testified to a grand jury against her. somehow i think that they consider my actions are breaking the marital bond, and i should have turned the other cheek. now i did testify again at the sentencing reccomendation hearing (very angrily and out of spite), and the testimony most definitely extended her sentence.

my ? is, am i in the wrong for what i did? “Render unto Caeser…” state laws ect. and so forth? i really dont feel all that bad about it, i arrest people who commit similar crimes all the time. But what does the church really say about something like this?
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given that I have not had the opportunity to talk with anyone in your church as to why they do not support you, I have to try to determine what is upsetting them from your post.

It is entirely possilbe that they are holding the arrest against you as a volation fo the marriage bond; and it is possbile that a subset of that is the all-too-common belief that only a husband can assault a wife; a wife is not “capable” of serious assault - that is, she can’t do anything you can’t reasonably protect yourself from.

If that is what is stewing in their craw, they are wrong.

However, the end of your post indicates there might be other reasons for their lack of support. Your post indicates, if nothing else, that this probably was a long, ongoing series of marital spats that had been escalating for some period of time, and may be an indicator of the general tenor of your marriage.

It further indicates some very deep seated anger with your wife, and possibly issues of controlling. Your testimony, while it is not available here, indcate that you had some seriopus anger still when it came time for sentancing, which had to be (by the general time lag of most courts) at least several weeks after the incident. That, too, points to possible need for some serious anger management classes. You don’t sound like a happy camper, to me. Life has some seriously rough spots, but you sound like the balance has been tipped strongly to the anger, control, manipulation side of issues.

I have known quite a few police officers, several of them as friends, and I am aware of their life and its pressures, and the need to exert control on the street.

Most of them don’t carry it home.

I have also met a few who were control freaks, with a hair-triiger anger residing just below the surface.

I hope you are not part of the latter group. If there is any tendency at all that way, you need to get help; if for no other reason than being a good police officer.

Being a good human might be an even more compelling reason.
 
it all comes down to MONEY and TIME. being a grad student you get paid less than minimum wage basically. working as a paramedic it can be looooong hours too. however, getting a graduate degree, becoming chief of operations of a big city EMS pay WELL WELL WELL. i did the police work because i love making a difference (besides, she volunteered as a therapetics dog handler)

struggle with finances, the area i work in as a cop, and my hours probably boiled over. the fact that we had to keep our “eyes on the prize” financially for me to get out of grad school.

as far as marital problems, it was just little thing after little thing, this and that, one after another. and during the fight, we were both trying to make our points simultaneously, and i guess she had enough.
 
I guess as long as she hit you in the head there couldn’t have been any damage done to you!
 
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mjdonnelly:
that aggrevated assault on a police officer is lame.

You were not acting in that capacity.
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as a matter of fact, in 1999 a police officer was shot to death in his driveway in a rural area several weeks after arresting a man for drug possession charges. the man held a grudge, followed him home, and gunned him down. the officer was not found until next morning. in early 2000, the county started using the “buddy system”, where a police officer is considered SWORN and ON DUTY until they call in from home or wherever to ensure their safety. that way, an officer may use deadly force, carry more than one weapon, and lawfully arrest ANYONE that threatens their or family’s safety, AS WELL AS attatches murder\assault of a police officer if they are attacked.

remember, it is the COUNTY\MUNICIPAL AUTHORITY that determines who\ when are SWORN. the county just extended the period to the trip home.
 
I don’t think you should feel like a jerk. It could have turned far uglier, as I’m assuming you were still carrying your sidearm and could have defended yourself from the assult.

I don’t think it was necessarily spiteful to testify against her, as long as the truth didn’t suffer through the telling of the story.

Look at it this way, it’s lucky it was you she came after with the frying pan, imagine if it had been your child that had done something to push her over “the edge.” She could have had a hard day with anyone, you were just the one in the crosshairs this time.

I can’t believe anyone would hold it against you, and I am amazed and embarrassed at some of the comments that have been posted.

What would these people have a spouse do, not turn the other spouse in for murder, extortion, child abuse or ?
 
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TomK:
I don’t think you should feel like a jerk. It could have turned far uglier, as I’m assuming you were still carrying your sidearm and could have defended yourself from the assult.
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thats the thing. we have a locked drawer in the night table where i keep the 9mm for nights, and during the fight i walked in the bedroom to put it away. no “setting it down” and no “prancing around” with it. either its in the drawer, or on my side. thats my 110% rule. that might have been what angered her so much because it seemed like i was “walking away” from her, when in reality i was trying to maintain a 110% safe home. guns dont kill people, lapses in judgement and irresponsibity do, and thats how i maintain my sidearm.
 
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BioCatholic:
remember, it is the COUNTY\MUNICIPAL AUTHORITY that determines who\ when are SWORN. the county just extended the period to the trip home.
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but you chose to arrest her. Maybe you should have let someone else do that.
 
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BioCatholic:
… i was still “on duty” and VERY angry, i arrested my wife for both spousal assault and aggravated assult on a police officer.
…she will end up serving 5 years before its over.i arrested, filed charges and testified to a grand jury against her…i really dont feel all that bad about it ?
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You arrested your wife, testified against her and she goes to prison for five years. You really don’t feel too bad about it. So much for the two being one flesh and being willing to lay down your life for your wife.

Violence is never justified, but I have heard enough stories like this to know there are always two sides. Unless she is absolutely wacko, this didn’t start with a frying pan.
 
um

if this is for real, which i highly doubt, my first question is…what exactly was the “something” your wife was ready to fight about? it must have been a big something for her to break out the frying pan. i notice you conveniently don’t mention what it specifically had to do with.

so your wife didn’t resist arrest? you were able to arrest your wife but were unable to stop her from a) getting the frying pan b) aiming at you c) swinging successfully ? ???

i hope your paltry justifications for being a “sworn officer” while screaming and yelling at your wife help keep you feeling comforted while your wife deals with prison life for the next five years.

i’d be interested in knowing if your wife will be speaking to her lawyer about the conduct of the arresting law enforcement officer who not only participated in the altercation but seemingly prolonged it with his provoking words and actions.
 
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Princess_Abby:
um

if this is for real, which i highly doubt, .
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I get the same impression. Either this is not real, or something significant is missing from the story, maybe a lot. Police officer are normally held to a higher standard not a lower one. The idea that one may first engage in an arguement, then get hurt, then arrest his wife for it. What value would such a person’s testimony be?
 
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pnewton:
I get the same impression. Either this is not real, or something significant is missing from the story, maybe a lot. Police officer are normally held to a higher standard not a lower one. The idea that one may first engage in an arguement, then get hurt, then arrest his wife for it. What value would such a person’s testimony be?
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My grandfather was a police officer for 30 years, and my father was a cop before he attended law school and became an attorney. This story doesn’t make sense at all. The OP doesn’t speak about the timeline, but jury trials don’t just happen out of thin air, with immediate sentencing, not to mention his wife would be out her mind not to appeal…

And he’s only been married 2.5 years? Unless this happened the day after they got married, I just don’t understand how it’s all possible.
 
A police officer no longer wants to be with his wife. He starts an argument with her while he is on duty, provokes her to violence after putting away sidearm. Then not defending himself he is asaulted. He then arrests and follows through with testimony putting her behind bars.

Divorce would be better!!!
 
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