The executive director of the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women welcomes the opportunity for a "culture shift" in the way Honolulu police respond to domestic violence in the wake of a highly publicized incident involving a police sergeant.

Catherine A. Betts, a former Hawaii deputy attorney general in the Family Law division, since 2011 has headed the commission devoted to achieving equality for girls and women through education, advocacy, collaboration and program development.

The sergeant caught on videotape apparently punching his girlfriend at a Waipahu restaurant last month was not charged by HPD nor indicted by a grand jury.

"The lack of charges is appalling but I’m not surprised that the system has failed. The public has seen how this case has been mishandled from beginning to end," said Betts. "At the very least, this case has shed light on the areas that desperately need improvement."

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 35.7 percent of women in Hawaii and 21.8 percent of men have experienced physical violence, rape and/or stalking committed by an intimate partner. Nationally, those figures are 35.6 percent and 28.5 percent, respectively, according to the CDC.

Betts, who holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of California-Los Angeles and a law degree from the University of Hawaii and also has private-practice experience in family and immigration law, deplored the cascading effects of domestic violence.

"It’s horrible for the victims, of course. It’s also very damaging to our society. We shouldn’t have girls and boys growing up thinking violence is the norm," said Betts, 37, a parent herself.

She and her husband, lawyer-turned-sommelier Aubrey Wood, have two young boys they are raising to be "safe and kind gentlemen."

QUESTION: … Are you surprised (the police officer was not charged)?

ANSWER: Yes and no. I am surprised considering the evidence and the fact that we have seen him assaulting his girlfriend. On the other hand, given the amount of support he’s received from HPD leadership it’s not surprising … People have a hard time believing that domestic violence exists and make multiple excuses for why an incident doesn’t rise to the level of abuse. But, I think in this case, it’s clear.

Q: You’ve talked about the need for a culture shift within HPD to make ending domestic violence a higher priority, and the need for better training for police officers. It seems like you’ve got  a dialogue going with HPD now. So are you hopeful that will occur?

A: I am hopeful. I was invited with other community stakeholders to look at HPD’s curriculum and to provide ideas and ways HPD can better educate officers about the dynamics of violence. Others are providing examples of best practices in other jurisdictions. Education and a culture change won’t happen overnight, but I feel like a good dialogue has started and will continue. 

Q: Can you talk a little bit about what HPD is promising to do?

A:  Promise is a strong word, but we have assurances that better practices will be implemented, that complaints will be taken seriously, and that we have allies within HPD that also strongly believe that there’s no excuse for domestic violence. 

Q: You were previously quoted as saying that over the last 18 months you have received information about more than 30 domestic-violence cases on Oahu that were mishandled. … Were there any commonalities? 

A: Some of the commonalities were that HPD was responding to the calls without a lot of respect for the victims, with a lot of disbelief — and I can’t imagine that happens in other crime calls. If someone got stabbed, or someone got mugged, there’s not going to be a lot of inserted victim-blaming in a crime like that.

Q: So they were just sort of … dismissing the complainants?

A: Yes. Or if they had responded to the victim before, they would almost treat them with a level of contempt, like ‘You haven’t left yet?’ ‘It’s you again?’ … What we saw was a lot of victims not being able to file a report because the police officer is not giving them the option to file a complaint, and so the incident happens and then it gets dropped. So if the victim wants to obtain a restraining order down the road, that’s not going to happen because there’s no evidence, no paper trail, and a judge is going to ask that. Did you call the police? Opposing counsel is going to ask that. How do we know that you’re really in fear of your husband, boyfriend, significant other, when there’s no police report? 

Q: So the police report is a vital first step to building a case?

A: Correct. If it is going to go that way. The other part of this is that victims often don’t feel safe coming forward. … They’re not going to come forward if they’re afraid of the police, they’re afraid of the police response, they think ‘I’m not going to be able to do anything anyway.’

Q: We’ve mostly been speaking about domestic violence in general. But what really brought this issue to a head was that videotaped incident specifically involving a police officer. Looking more narrowly at that subset of cases, do you think we have a problem in HPD with domestic abuse, or do you think this was an isolated incident?

A: I think it’s statistically impossible that it’s an isolated incident. We know that police officers experience issues with domestic violence at a higher rate than the general population. … I don’t believe that officers feel comfortable responding to police-officer involved domestic disputes or running it up the chain of command and informing a higher-up or a supervisor. … There’s a silence behind the shield. There’s an unwritten code of conduct … their own, internal code that’s not written in any book anywhere. Then they are untouchable. That’s why having a culture shift in HPD is so important.

Q: Can you say how many of those 30 cases involved a police officer as the abuser, or a relative of a police officer?

A: About a third. … There were instances where … HPD berates and asks all kinds of out-of-line questions of the victim. Victim recants. Police go away. Or they asked, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come down and take a polygraph to make sure that this really happened?’ Just running them hoops so that they don’t report, or make it very difficult to report. 

Q: Domestic violence is a very serious topic, but it’s not the only issue the commission is concerned about. Looking more broadly, how is the status of women in Hawaii overall? … Are there any areas where things are getting better? 

A: We fare OK in terms of pay equity. We have to be mindful still that it’s not 100 percent. It’s 83 cents for the man’s dollar in an identical position with identical credentials. … But we do fare better than other states. We fare better in public health overall; women generally have more access to health insurance and health coverage and reproductive health care in this state. We’ve worked for 50 years to ensure that. In 2012, the governor signed the emergency contraception for rape victims and that was something that we had fought for over 15 years in this state. So we have a very strong community of advocates for women that have been working really tirelessly to make sure that the status of women improves. … 

Q: Any other major goals or challenges?

A: We’ve been working to obtain paid family leave for all employees, all workers within the state. … Increasing the minimum wage and paid family leave are two ways that we can ensure we can close the gender inequity in terms of pay. So we were able to successfully advocate for the passage of the minimum wage increase, which is something that the commission worked on with the larger community. And so our next step was to really look at paid family leave. … No state law and no federal law requires any pay during any leave. 

Q: I recall reading that 47 percent of full-time minimum wage workers in Hawaii are women. 

A: Many of them are women with children — either the sole breadwinner or the primary breadwinner is a woman with a minimum-wage job. There’s no way you can get by without state benefits. We can help to decrease the number of people who are relying on state benefits by ensuring that they earn a living wage.

Q: I’ve asked you about some of the challenges you face in this job, so flipping that: What do you find most rewarding about this position? … 

A: Lots. It’s a dream job. I get to do what I love to do, which is work on policy affecting women and families. I get to work with community groups and nonprofits and all sorts of people to see how we can better people’s lives.

Q: You’re working with lawmakers a lot. How important is it to advancing policy goals that there are women holding office, having positions of authority, like in the Legislature?

A: If women aren’t in office, then we’re not at the table when it counts the most — our voices aren’t heard and policies won’t represent us. … We’re always encouraging people to get involved. 

Q: Anything else you’d like to talk about?

A: Another issue that we’ve been looking at is Title IX compliance at UH-Manoa. Title IX is another really amazing policy for women and girls that continues to evolve and is part of (the late U.S. Rep.) Patsy Mink’s legacy. So we’ve been looking at compliance and I know that the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education has been completing an audit of UH for Title IX compliance. That’s something that we’ve been actively looking at and ensuring that they also have best practices to follow.