The Montgomery County Police Department has released initial domestic violence crime data for the first four months of 2018. Court Watch has requested data on all 911 domestic violence calls for 2017 and hopes to report soon on more complete statistics, and compare them to similar data we obtained from the police department in 2014.
Thus far in 2018 the police department has written police reports on 789 domestic violence incidents. 83% of the incidents involved violent crime, including assault, rape, robbery, kidnapping and homicide. Additional crimes committed in the course of domestic violence incidents included harassment, stalking, vandalism, threatening calls and violations of protective orders. Not all 911 calls about domestic violence are reflected, as officers do not write reports on all incidents.
Approximately 40% of the domestic violence incidents occurred in Silver Spring and Wheaton (Police Districts 3 and 4) and 43% occurred in the Germantown and Gaithersburg areas (Police Districts 5 and 6).
The department reports 11 total homicides thus far this year; 5 are labeled “domestic-related.” The others homicides are, or are suspected to be, drug-related.
Four of the 5 domestic-related homicides were intimate partner violence-related. In one of these incidents the perpetrator then committed suicide. The remaining homicide involved a mentally ill grand-daughter beating her grandmother to death.
Court Watch is working to make more police department data on domestic violence crimes available to residents. Running counts of domestic violence crime reports should be regularly posted on the County’s data Montgomery site. A recent search of the site for data on domestic violence resulted in 0 results.