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Officer Involved Domestic Violence: The Murder of Abby Bieber

• Genesis Women's Shelter & Support

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What happens when your abuser carries a badge and a gun? For victims of officer-involved domestic violence, the journey to safety becomes a dangerous maze with few exits.

Bruce Bieber joins us with the heartbreaking story of his daughter Abby – a rising star deputy sheriff who was murdered by her intimate partner, himself a detective in the same sheriff's office. This wasn't a random tragedy but the culmination of systemic failure, as her killer had previously been reported for domestic violence years earlier, only to have the incident swept under the rug.

Through tears and determination, Bruce reveals how his quest for answers uncovered layers of institutional protection that prioritized shielding officers over protecting victims. When he discovered that approximately 40% of police families experience domestic abuse – potentially hundreds of thousands of households – he transformed his grief into purpose.

The parallels between Abby's case and countless others expose a chilling pattern: documentation disappears, investigations vanish, and perpetrators not only remain employed but often advance in their careers. Questions about the failure of fellow officers to intervene when Abby was killed reveal uncomfortable truths about the "blue wall of silence" that protects abusers in uniform.

Bruce is now fighting for legislation requiring Florida's law enforcement agencies to adopt protocols for handling cases when the abuser wears a badge. His urgent message resonates beyond one family's tragedy: if we immediately act when officers commit robbery or deal drugs, why do we still treat domestic violence as a private matter rather than the crime it is?

Share this powerful episode with someone who needs to hear it, and join us in breaking the silence around officer-involved domestic violence.

Speaker 1:

Officer-involved domestic violence contains further complexities than most domestic violence cases, Because when your abusive partner is a member of law enforcement, who do you report the abuse to, and will anyone believe you? Chances are maybe not, or they will look the other way if the abuser is one of their own. My guest, Bruce Bieber, is the father of Abigail Rose Bieber, former Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office deputy, who was killed in a murder-suicide by her intimate partner who, at the time of the incident, was a detective. Bruce is here to share his family's story of getting justice for Abby and how deeply officer-involved domestic violence is impacting women in America. I'm Maria McMullin and this is Genesis the podcast. I'm Maria McMullin and this is Genesis the podcast. Bruce, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, Maria, for the opportunity.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's good to be with you and I've enjoyed getting to know you over the past few months and learning about your daughter, Abby. What I'd like to do today is learn more about her and hear her story and what's happened and what you and your family are doing to try to address the issue of officer-involved domestic violence. So, to begin, tell us about Abby. What was she like and what was she passionate about?

Speaker 2:

Abby was a remarkable young woman celebrating her 34th birthday coming up in about a week. She was killed just before her 31st. We just passed the three-year mark. Abby was a scholar, athlete, loyal friend, funny as the day is long, fearsome warrior that ever lived, dedicated to helping those less fortunate than she was, always as a child. It carried through to her profession Terrific curiosity about the world, about her, actually went to UT Austin for her first college experience, her first year.

Speaker 1:

Meaning she was probably really smart too, because that's not an easy school to get into.

Speaker 2:

No right, particularly for somebody from out of state.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and the fit didn't line up perfectly. So she came back to Maryland and finished up at the University of Maryland where she graduated. Her older brothers were into law enforcement. She followed in their footsteps. You couldn't slip the thinnest paper between the three of them. They were so close, Incredibly family-oriented and dedicated young woman. My wife and I raised them in the Washington DC area in Bethesda, Maryland. Abby was the pioneer who left the area first to come down to Tampa Bay area and put down roots. Our middle son followed thereafter and then our oldest boy after that, and then she started a clock in her head and heart waiting for her mom and dad to come down and join them. We remain close even though they're all grown, some with families of their own and intentionally found a home proximate to their homes, centrally located, so they could gather on weekends and thoughtful kind giving.

Speaker 2:

A Fellini movie expert, I mean she could tell you the 16 layers of Fellini movies that you didn't know existed A reader, a runner, Like I said, she was an athlete.

Speaker 2:

She won awards, National Athletic Prowess, Loved her job Sadly, you know and ironically in the end loved being a deputy sheriff. Was a natural leader, Took women under her wings that she didn't have to, to show them the way, the newbies, the newer ones who followed in her footsteps, she would take them offline and say look, this is how you should do this. She wanted women in the field to do better and be better. Look at upon herself. Nobody asked her to do it, I think at every turn showed natural, innate leadership ability and I think they did recognize that Likely would have very soon this fateful trip have been promoted off the street as hold up something. You live in fear of this. This is a still photograph, taken from a ring camera, of the deputies coming to our house 2.52 in the morning to tell us that our daughter's never coming home, and when you have three kids in law enforcement, and one, by the way, who also did a combat tour for his army in.

Speaker 2:

Afghanistan. You live on pins and needles. You know and you hope for the best and provide every resource you can to protect them but can't protect against. And the worst, absolute worst, happened one night came to our door right before she would have gotten off the road and minimized the risk likely. But I guess we'll get into talking about OIDV and its pernicious nature and find that, frankly, it can strike anywhere, anytime, any place, any strata, any demographic, any age right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, bruce, thank you for giving me, or all of us, the background about Abby. She sounds like an amazing woman who was definitely a rising star in both her work and throughout her life, and I'm really sorry for your loss and your family's loss. This should have never happened. And you did say the term OIDV and that stands for, for our listeners, officer Involved Domestic Violence, and we may refer to it as that abbreviation throughout this show. So you mentioned that all three of your children, two sons and a daughter, were in law enforcement. So Abby was a sheriff's deputy and both your sons being in law enforcement. Any thoughts on why all three of your kids chose a career in law enforcement?

Speaker 2:

Lots of thoughts, no answers. My wife and I are not, never were, never would be. It was a shock and a surprise that one did, that two did and then the third. It was insane. We suspect it has something to do with 9-11. Maybe it's so, maybe it's not at a formative time in their lives, being public service minded likely contributed to it. My wife's a public school teacher. My oldest boy joined a volunteer ambulance service in his early teen years and stayed with it all the way through high school and joined a fire department in college, actually lived in one at Penn State, and so he had first responder experience that set the mark, I suppose, for his younger brother who then went into the Army and had left it to Abby. And I think there was a sort of a natural progression perhaps from that sort of stepping off into public service by the oldest and then middle, expanding it a little bit and then following him into law enforcement, so on. Abby with her talent and abilities could have gone in any one of a thousand directions.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, they definitely sound like a unique group and, as you mentioned, they were very, very close. Let's get into the story a little bit about the officer-involved domestic violence that she experienced. What happened to Abby?

Speaker 2:

Well, the shortest, simplest way to say it is a then-boyfriend there are quotes there murdered her and then himself. She confronted him with the fact that she was leaving him. The relationship was over. As we all know, now is the most dangerous time Abusive relationship and he shot her. I'm going to be frank because reality, I think, should be shared. That's how brutal this can be when it ends this most horrible way. He shot her three times in the head and then he shot himself. They were with other deputies, two other couples couples in air quotes on an extended weekend vacation trip to St Augustine, about three hours from where I'm sitting and from where Abby lived, and those oddly it's sort of a side note, but those deputies, when the shooting happened, hid in a closet for almost two hours, did almost nothing to help check on their friend.

Speaker 1:

Right, they were there when the shooting happened and yet they didn't confront anything or go in and look at what happened.

Speaker 2:

They did not and in fact we asked them there you know, after it's not uncommon for law enforcement officers to carry weapons off duty and we asked if any of them had had their weapons with them when this happened and they said that two of the men had brought guns but they were downstairs packed up because they were going to come home the next day. They were inaccessible. The shooting happened upstairs in this rental home. They were inaccessible. The shooting happened upstairs in this rental home. And then I got the public record. I did a public record request to the county that did the investigation and got the 911 transcript and the actual audio recording.

Speaker 2:

And of course the local police wanted to know is anybody armed? We understand you're cops. Somebody's been shot, we don't know who. Somebody's. You're all cops. You may or may not have guns. Who has a gun? Who doesn't have a gun? Sure, and it turned out they were lying to us. One of them did have a gun on him, hiding in the closet, still didn't act. So when I think of Uvalde, I think of the Parkland thing and I wonder. My wife wonders, and my sons and, frankly, every law enforcement officer we know, who we present this to, wonders why did they do that? Why didn't they act? And again, that's a side thing, that's not why we're here.

Speaker 2:

More madness that I uncovered, which is, I think, germane to why we're here, the more questions I started asking about what happened to my daughter, the more malfeasance, the more obfuscation, the more sort of just absolute corruption I know this is a I use this term advisedly criminality and other just very poor behavior that just does not promote a sense of integrity and faith in the law enforcement organization. That all arose because of this horrible, tragic murder. And I'm just a dad who wanted answers. I just wanted to know why is my daughter dead? What could be done differently, what should have been done differently? And as I start, and the sheriff, a very charismatic, very powerful man in this area he almost literally wrapped his arms around me and my whole family and said we're here for you. Anything you need, we'll open investigations, we'll arrest people, we'll do this, we'll do that. There's no limits. But then, as I put meat on the bones, I did start asking questions, I did ask for help. That door closed a little and then more and more and more until it was shut.

Speaker 2:

So, and I think that that is emblematic, frankly, of almost an institutional imperative, an almost reflexive move on the part of some law enforcement to not own up to their transgressions, their failures to stare, you know, frankly, into the face of opportunities to do better and, I think, fulfill their mission to protect and serve, and they don't take it seriously. And I think it implicates patriarchy, it implicates certainly hundreds, if not thousands of years of men just thinking they can tread willy-nilly on women as if they were mere chattels, any and everyone that gets in the way of maintaining that hegemony. And it's just wrong and it's got to stop. And, by the way, you know, I say this as somebody who respects law enforcement with not one, two but all three of our kids in law, I understand the importance of the field profession. We need it, we need it, we want it. As a civilized society, we authorize it and demand it, but I think that we should and it's absolutely fair to expect them to police themselves.

Speaker 1:

That's where they've fallen down. Yeah, for sure that's fair. Your comments are very well stated and very well taken. For sure that's fair and very. Your comments are very well stated and very well taken. I understand you have been through tremendous amount of trauma and challenge related to not just the loss of your daughter but the entire fallout of the investigation and deterioration of relationship with the sheriff's office. I want to go back for a minute because there's a little bit more to the story that you and I have talked about before and then I also did some reading about, because Abby, your daughter, was not laid in her former boyfriend's first victim. He had been accused of intimate partner violence by a woman he previously dated. He reported the violence and yet law enforcement at that time did not arrest him or even take the event seriously.

Speaker 1:

A fact cited in the Crime Lines podcast that covered this story, where host Charlie Worrell called the behavior willful ignorance. That's a quote, In other words, a quote. You're not going to find what you don't look for. And she goes on to say it is a harsh reality that domestic violence is seen as a lesser crime. And these quotes are from episode 45, published in December 16th 2024. And this is just the beginning of how law enforcement failed a DV victim in that case. Let's talk about that.

Speaker 2:

Well, when I made mention of the fact that I started a progression of asking questions and unpeeling layers of obfuscation, it all arose from that catalyst. That was the origin point, when a guy a deputy I didn't know told me Dan Layden had been the subject of a DV call six years earlier, july 3rd 2016,. That's when I and that was two, three days after Abby was killed and this guy told me this and my head exploded. I was like, oh my God. I immediately knew, with a clarity that I've never had in my life, that this didn't have to happen. I didn't know the facts and the circumstances of what he was referring to, but it was clear to me that Dan Layden, the murderer, had come to official police notice his own agency, no less and that told me somebody dropped something, somewhere, somehow, and it was my job to figure out what and where. I set out right from that moment to contact everybody who was on that call, every other deputy who works for that agency who responded that night I wanted to talk to and I got to some, but not all of them who responded that night I wanted to talk to and I got to some, but not all of them, and I very quickly was able to triangulate a sense that oh, absolutely, mr Bieber, he should have been fired.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, mr Bieber, that man was out of control and they felt that it was disturbing that he wasn't fired.

Speaker 2:

And they didn't know, they wouldn't have had the information that he wasn't even investigated in even the barest administrative internal sense. But Charlie's absolutely right. You know, I made the point myself. You don't see what you don't look for and law enforcement doesn't want to see this. They know it's there and they don't admit it except in, you know, the confines of their own inner sanctums. So very definitely, yes, this guy had other and, by the way, her name is Chyna Ratner that other victim and I think I can say it because she put up an Instagram video out very publicly, and she became a subject of interest to the investigators who were investigating Abby's murder. And when she came out with her revelation, days after Abby's death, they came down from St Augustine to meet her and told her or told them there were eight other women who had essentially come out of the woodwork and confided in her that they too had been victimized to one unknown extent or another by the same guy.

Speaker 2:

Incredible Not only was it China Ratner. There are other women. I don't know how legitimate those accounts are. It's sort of hearsay from China to a homicide investigator. I don't know who they are. I don't know how legitimate those accounts are. It's sort of hearsay from China to a homicide investigator. I don't know who they are. I don't know what he did, but I have no doubt that he did do something to other, that there were other victims.

Speaker 1:

Right, I mean domestic violence is. It's a pattern and it's usually not an isolated incident, and it also escalates, typically until a murder or murder suicide. Those are facts.

Speaker 2:

And I. If anybody doubts it, you can give them my number.

Speaker 1:

Right, I mean, and the fact that you had to have that call and hear that news three days after your daughter was murdered is that's really devastating. I mean, I just-.

Speaker 2:

It's crushing. I was, you know. The sheriff's office has sent a sergeant over. We live in Pinellas County, next door to Hillsborough County.

Speaker 1:

We're having work there, you know adjacent.

Speaker 2:

But you know law enforcement. You probably know you've seen when a deputy or an officer is killed in the line of duty. There's a very big production you know about.

Speaker 1:

There is.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know the bagpipes and all the formal stuff they do and trust me when I tell you it's in a strange way comforting, you know, to have a whole lot of people expressing some sort of dignified gratitude in a public way. Yeah, you know, we're upside down and sideways. We don't know what the heck is going on. You're in a strange world. Yes, but I learned that in the middle of that. Yes, but I learned that in the middle of that. So this sergeant had picked us up at our home in Pinellas County to drive us to Hillsborough County where a procession was going to go across state it was well filmed and televised to St Augustine to retrieve Abby's body and bring her back home to Pinellas County. My wife and I saw a fit to see the procession off at O Dark 30. So they said they'd pick us up. So a very kind sergeant picked us up. We didn't know this guy and it was after the procession.

Speaker 2:

Our sons, our two boys, were in the procession. They wanted to participate to go get their sister. My one son, having been a firefighter and an EMS operator for many years and a cop frankly in his mind's eye, knew that her body was lying in a morgue in St Augustine, far more likely than not right next to the body of the guy that killed her. Yes, and he was consumed by the need to get her away from him as quickly as he could. So they jumped at the opportunity to go with that procession.

Speaker 2:

So this whole thing was so fraught with emotion. Yeah, and then to your point, this guy lays this just mind-blowing news on it. I mean, it was bad enough. You know, our daughter was just stricken dead and you know we had to plan a funeral. And then this, and I was, I remember being in the sergeant's car, kind of shaking in the back. My wife was texting the deputy's name badge, or you know his name, on his shirt to myself, because I'd forget and the barest outline of what he told me, because I knew it was going to again be the catalyst, the impetus for something. I was going to have to find out what happened and it was going to start with him.

Speaker 1:

I really value you sharing this level of detail with us, because this is a subject that's very hard to document and research. You know, if you're in the field of domestic violence or even law enforcement trying to get more information about officer-involved domestic violence or what you've informed me is also called police-perpetrated domestic violence. Let's talk about some of the substance to that. What are some of the statistics or background information you can give us on that topic?

Speaker 2:

Well, I'd recommend everybody interested in the topic, everybody read Police Wife Alex Roslin's book 10 years old now but he does, I think, a very good and broad summation of the field from a data and academic set, not only academic. It's not a dry academic book by any means, he's a well, it's called Police Wife. He's a well-known writer, he's still around a Canadian and he recites the case of Eleanor Boulin Johnson who in the mid to late 80s was doing a study on a different topic, but I think it was related, but it wasn't. Oidv Women came in prospective subjects and the first subject said I don't care what you want to talk about, I want to tell you about the abuse I'm suffering at the hands of my husband, a cop, and it was staggering, devastating news. And she and her research assistant made a mental note that wow, that was weird because we were asking about apples and she told us about oranges. Then the next one comes in, same thing and another woman married to another cop, and same kind of story of abuse. And it started dawning on them that wait a minute, maybe we should be studying oranges, not apples. And so it's odd, but it was an accident. She didn't even intend to study it. But she kicked off and she's credited with the origin story of how the study of OIDV and the collection of data started.

Speaker 2:

Testified on the Hill in 91, put out stats. She studied, I think, 720 cops and tried to extrapolate from their experiences in their study what the ratio, the prevalence of abuse in those police families was. She's the one who first put a number on the order of 40%, saying 40% of law enforcement families indicated the presence of abuse in their families. Now, from that, alex Roslin and many others since have said if you make a call for service as an abuse victim, you know, consequently, there's a two in five chance, you know, 40 percent chance that one of those cops showing up is an abuser to your house. Yes, and if you let that gel a little, you understand perhaps, maybe better why Gabby Petito ended up the way she ended up, because one of those cops in Moab supposedly also had a record abuse. Not a shock then. And is the 40% correct? I don't know. There's 720,000 cops more or less in the US of all manner university cops, railroad cops, state, local, federal. 40% of that's what? 280,000? Is that right?

Speaker 1:

Well, I can't do that math in my head, but I would have to say that with domestic violence going underreported, 40% may represent just the tip of the iceberg.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's a very fair point. It's a very it's known to be underreported in the civilian context. Right, yes, forget police. Yeah, and it doesn't really okay. It's 20%, it's 40, it's 50, some say 50% higher in law enforcement. All the more the case. You could well then have, you know, 300 plus thousand families putting their heads on pillows every night with an abuser, and I get out of bed and go. Why doesn't anybody care? You know, that's a big number. I look at the US census data major causes of death. That's like half the number of the leading heart disease. I think it's like 700, 800,000. You're approaching half of that. And that doesn't get countries attention, you know. And now that? And that doesn't get countries attention, right, you know. And now that's not deaths, mind you, that's just people suffering abuse, and it's not necessarily physical abuse, but still it's a staggering number, I think.

Speaker 1:

I won't argue with it. I mean, I completely agree that it is staggering, that this is an epidemic and we haven't even talked about and I don't know if we'll have time to talk about the issue of gun violence in this and related situations, because law enforcement carry firearms. And if you have 50%, 40, 50% of the people who are legally armed, protecting civilians. What is that telling you?

Speaker 2:

It's a recipe for disaster. It is and the lethality assessment protocols that are, in fact, the Petito family and the Schmitz have pushed for the adoption of legislation compelling law enforcement when we're responding to a domestic violence call to administer a LAP, a lethality assessment protocol. It's a list of questions that assess the relative danger that this person may be in and the presence of a firearm is one of them.

Speaker 2:

That's a gimme on police, You're right. So automatically you're starting from a period of enhanced risk, and that's nuts. And I know you had Mark Wynn on once, who I consider a dean, a god, a guru, a mentor, and he has a terrific way of breaking this down, the OIDV thing. But he said how much criminality do you want in your local law enforcement? Which is to say, a cop on a shift who robs a bank and I use this example to illustrate the point a nightly shift with let's just assume, for simplicity, it's all guys. So you have three guys, three men on the shift. One has to rob a bank once a month, One has to deal meth once a month and one beats his wife once a month.

Speaker 2:

Nobody has any problem conceiving or accepting the proposition that of course you have to go to your sergeant, you know your corporal, your whatever your higher up and report the bank robber and the meth dealer because they're criminals, behaving criminally, committing crimes that should be prosecuted. We can't have that, because we're cops, we can't be bank robbers and meth dealers. But the guy who beats his wife, we look the other way. They tolerate that, they excuse that, they sanction it, they implicitly, I think, become complicit. It's not even implicitly, they're explicitly doing it by not saying, hey, that's a crime too. It is a crime.

Speaker 2:

So why do you accept it? Bank robbery no. Beating your wife yes. Why? What possible explanation is there? Except I think and if I'm wrong, I'm obviously not here to argue and debate but it strikes me that the only answer can only be like a patriarchal notion that men get to do whatever the hell they want. And if they want to beat their kid, their dog or their wife, that's not my business. I'm not going to the sergeant with that, that's his private business. Well, no, it isn't. And when, as Mark points out, something on the order of half the calls for service are domestic related?

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

A third. A third. You ask for statistics. Something like a third of all line of duty deaths in law enforcement come from domestic calls. Right, it is in their own personal interest, the interest of the bank robber on the shift and the meth dealer, their own brothers in blue and sisters, of course, to figure out a better way to respond to domestic violence calls. For that reason alone, if a third of their deaths, and a lot of the others, are car crashes, not wearing seatbelts, COVID obviously killed a ton of them, but if you look at the major causes of death of law enforcement, that's huge.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it definitely tops the list and you're absolutely right and very, very pointed, well said stats and I appreciate you having that information to share with us. I want to talk again for a minute about the sheriff's office to understand how they responded to this incident and if there was an internal investigation of Daniel Layden before or after the fatal shooting. And, if you can, how did law enforcement fail your daughter?

Speaker 2:

I'll do the last part first. How did they fail? You had Kimberly Orts from Blue Opal on. Yes, did they fail? You had Kimberly Orts from Blue Opal on.

Speaker 2:

Yes, she trains law enforcement and others on how to respond in a more trauma-informed way to domestic violence, she and many others, like Russ Strand, who developed this FETI approach. There are different approaches that are trauma-informed, that are just enlightened, best practices, ways of hey, here's an idea, learn from the past, figure out a better way. Well, law enforcement in some places cases has done that there is a better model. The IACP, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, developed a model rule for OIDV, originally in 99, reissued and updated in 2003. What are we looking at? 22 years ago, if every jurisdiction had the model rules or some form thereof in place and the protocols that they include, it would save lives. Simple statement period, the end okay, right, Adopt model rules. How did they fail? They didn't do a trauma-informed investigation at all afterwards, neither criminally or administratively. Most of the model rules have a two-track system. If a law enforcement officer is a perpetrator of domestic violence, they will start both tracks, criminal and administrative.

Speaker 2:

After China Ratner's video came out, the sheriff's office had egg all over its face and had to act. If they do anything right. They are very big on social media and public information stuff. So the PIO puts out a statement. They are very big on social media and public information stuff. So the PIO puts out a statement. We are aware of the very serious allegations raised by Channa Ratner. We've opened an investigation. If you or anyone you know knows anything about it, don't hesitate to contact us. And, by the way, if you're feeling suicidal, call this number.

Speaker 2:

Side note in murder, suicides involving cops, the press, law enforcement, almost everybody involved, there's a reflexive move. I say murder, suicide. They only hear suicide. Oh my God, this poor person saw so much terrible stuff as a cop. He killed somebody else and then himself. Too bad, he didn't call the suicide hotline and get help. They completely forget. Wait a minute, there was a murder here too. It's like after the fact, incidental side bit. But we have to stop that and think before we do that next time. So they say they opened an investigation.

Speaker 2:

I'm half a genius. So I say well, I'm sideways with the sheriff's office. Now I'm going to do a public records request and ask for a copy of that investigation. I get back. You could have had a second grader who hadn't learned how to write at all to respond to that, and that would have been more meaningful than the response I got back from them. It was gobbledygook garbage. What are you talking about? There's no investigation. What do you mean? There's no investigation? This thing happened. Somebody's dead, two people are dead. There's a whole bunch of cops involved. You yourself said you opened an investigation. You're a law enforcement organization. I've actually got a law degree. Believe it or not, I can do the math and say well, even if there's a negative finding, even if you did an investigation and found out nothing meaningful, you say that who did you talk to? When did you talk to them? Who, what, when, how and why? And we reached no, no conclusions, sorry, unfounded. I didn't even get that. They acted as if none of it ever happened.

Speaker 1:

And like none of the events ever happened or the investigation Okay.

Speaker 2:

And I did a public record request for the incident. I can find the report. There's an official police incident report of the China Ratner thing. I read every scrap of that, started asking questions. They told me they'd get every. I wanted everybody who was there in the room with the sheriff. I said I want my sons, who are just absolutely natural gifted investigators, just without training. They're just empaths and perceptive and intuitive and smart and my wife. I wanted us all there to be able to ask these people who were their questions, because I believe Abby's death warrant was signed on July 3rd 2016, when they did nothing, when they did nothing at all. You had a hard-charging, young, buck up-and-coming officer who's part of the tribe and they bring him in.

Speaker 2:

We sat in a room with the then deputy chief, the number two in that organization Again, the top I think 11 biggest sheriff's office in the nation, almost a half a billion dollar budget annually not a small trifling Mayberry RFD kind of a police agency, a sophisticated group and that deputy chief and my sons and my wife. We all sat there and we listened to. They got very few. I told you I wanted all the people that were there. We got like two and actually one really. And in summing up what all the garbage we heard from them, all the non-answers, all the obfuscation I said it sounds to me like the major, you know a fairly high-ranking command staff person who handled the area where the incident happened with China Ratner.

Speaker 2:

It's his same. The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office responded he was a Hillsborough County Sheriff's Deputy at the time.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

But he worked in a different district than where it happened. Okay, so there'd be a major from his district who's got the day-to-day command of what happens in Dan Layden's world, and then there's a major who handles what happens in the district where the event happened with China. So you have two majors, two high-ranking people I was surmising got together and decided, well, she's not really hurt, he's not really hurt, let's just let it go. And that deputy chief affirmed that, said, yeah, that's probably the way it went. Now I'm here to tell you. You ask well, what could they have done differently or where did it go wrong?

Speaker 1:

That's where we're wrong, that's not how you do it.

Speaker 2:

You do the investigation the way investigations are supposed to be done, irrespective, without any fear or favor. And, by the way, it would be, in a perfect world, done by another agency too, not by your own fox guarding the hen house, kind of thing.

Speaker 1:

Exactly, and also from what I've read about Layden. That was six years prior to when he murdered Abby and then for those six years I don't know about any other DV incidents with him. That isn't the point, so much as he received commendations.

Speaker 2:

That's right, not uncommon.

Speaker 1:

As an officer. He went on to advance in his work and people truly forgot or just completely dismissed the incident that had happened with China. And here we are.

Speaker 2:

They quieted it up, they covered it up. They I can't say quashed it in a legal sense, but they certainly didn't draw attention to it. Somebody else I know did a public records request, knowing the China incident happened, and asked for his jacket, his files, after he was dead and they didn't send it. That was not included. That whole incident you just spoke of, on July 3rd 2016, wasn't even included in his file. Now, there were no charges. You know there were allegations and, by the way, that's something I think Kimberly Orts also points out you know, you see what you look for. You know, and if you don't look for it, you ain't going to see it and there were certainly statutory elements of crimes stalking, false imprisonment, probably a charge of domestic abuse, assault. He was beating on her car yeah, he's. I don't know if you remember the details, but he kind of trapped her.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I do remember the details. People should look up that episode of Crime Lines to hear kind of an outline of the whole story around Abby's case. But before I let you go because offline you and I discussed some other things we discussed similar cases that led to at least some steps, some significant steps in this country in addressing officer-involved domestic violence. And while I can research and find many cases of similar nature, there is very little reliable data related to OIDV and you're working to change that. Tell us about the work you are doing to address the problem of officer-involved domestic violence or police-perpetrated domestic violence.

Speaker 2:

The problem of officer-involved domestic violence or police-perpetrated domestic violence. Well, I am trying to get Tallahassee, the state capital in Florida, pass a statute that would compel the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, fdle, likely to administer a program whereby each one of the 273 law enforcement agencies in the state of Florida adopt a model rule for OIDV in the state of Florida, adopt a model rule for OIDV, which is to say police perpetrated domestic violence episode. Every cop, almost without exception, in the United States of America, is exposed in training to how to handle a domestic violence call Because, as we all agreed, it's a predominant call nature type. It strikes me as a very small ask to say to add on to that training that all cops get. Oh, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, when you arrive at that domestic violence call scene, it may very well be that the perpetrator is a cop, maybe one you work with, maybe another agency, who knows, but a cop. And if it is a cop, well then this you know, if the different rules, different protocols, different buttons have to get pushed, it should implicate an entire regimen of responses that vary from those of the purely civilian call.

Speaker 2:

I would like to see the state of Florida make every single agency adopt a model rule. Not the model rule because one won't fit all. I get that. You know small agencies, large agencies, not the same rule. They don't have the model rule because one won't fit all. I get that. Small agencies, large agencies, not the same rule. They don't have the same resources, same abilities, same skills, but they should at least be socializing anybody who carries a badge and a gun with the idea that very different dynamics. Diane Wettendorf wrote prolifically on this topic. Diane Wettendorf is a encyclopedia of police-perpetrated domestic violence, her preferred term. That's one thing I'm trying to do and the second thing, having a model rule is separate from the training right. I do want the training. Fsu, florida State University almost the same track timeline that IACP did developed a model training policy and implemented it.

Speaker 2:

Verizon suffered the loss in a terrible. I think it's called Amy's story. I might get the name wrong. You may know better than I, but I've seen it. It's very compelling. Poor woman, a subject of horrific abuse. A Verizon retail store employee was killed at a Verizon retail store. They funded the implementation of the OIDV training toolkit developed by FSU. It worked. They tested it a rigorous academic study and proved it worked. How we let that lie on a shelf to this day, you know, 22 years later is beyond me and I don't think I'm asking much to say. Can we not find a million dollars somewhere to get this program off the shelf, updated and back in service?

Speaker 1:

I don't think you're asking too much. I think that's one of the smartest things that I've heard about. I really value that you have taken up this cause and I'm sorry for the way that it came about, but we need your voice in this conversation. I appreciate you and your family, and I thank you, bruce, for talking with me today.

Speaker 2:

Grateful for the opportunity. Maria, Thank you so much.

Speaker 1:

Genesis Women's Shelter and Support exists to give women in abusive situations a way out. We are committed to our mission of providing safety, shelter and support for women and children who have experienced domestic violence and to raise awareness regarding its cause, prevalence and impact. Join us in creating a societal shift on how people think about domestic violence. You can learn more at genesisshelterorg and when you follow us on social media on Facebook and Instagram at Genesis Women's Shelter, and on X at Genesis Shelter. The Genesis Helpline is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by call or text at 214-946-HELP 214-946-4357.