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Barred From Her Own Home: How a Tool for Fighting Domestic Abuse FailsShamika Crawford was left homeless and separated from her children by an order of protection that was later dismissed. Lawyers say cases like hers are common.
Shamika Crawford was left homeless for nearly three months by an order of protection in a domestic-violence case against her that was eventually dismissed.Credit...Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York TimesJune 17, 2021
Shamika Crawford stood before the judge the day she was arrested in the Bronx. She was free to go, but not to go home: The judge issued an order of protection that barred her from her own apartment.
For the next 88 days, Ms. Crawford was left homeless based on a vaguely worded misdemeanor assault complaint filed by her on-again, off-again boyfriend. She lived in her car and crashed on a friend’s couch. She lost her full-time job. With nowhere to bring her two young children, she left them with the boyfriend, their father, in her public-housing apartment where she kept paying the rent.
“It seems like whoever calls the cops, that’s whose side they’re on,” said Ms. Crawford, 35.
When another judge finally scrutinized the case, it unraveled, and was eventually dismissed.
Situations like Ms. Crawford’s, say public defenders in New York City and some domestic-violence experts, are an everyday occurrence in a corner of the justice system where defendants are effectively presumed guilty rather than innocent.
The temporary protection order, also known as a stay-away order, is a well-intentioned pretrial precaution to shield people from abusive partners. But it is issued with such abandon in city courts that it has become a sentence unto itself. One state lawmaker, Assemblyman Dan Quart of Manhattan, said its overuse amounted to a “family separation policy.”
Prosecutors in domestic violence cases almost always request the orders, and judges grant them almost reflexively: In Ms. Crawford’s case in 2019, the judge said he would issue the order before he had even given her lawyer a chance to speak on it.
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