A Los Angeles City Council committee approved a plan on Monday to create a subcommittee aimed at reducing incidents of domestic violence among same-sex couples.
The City Council still must approve setting up the subcommittee, which will be overseen by the city's Domestic Violence Task Force. If approved, members of the subcommittee also would be charged with reviewing how laws are enforced in domestic violence cases involving same-sex partners.
Terra Slavin, a staff attorney with the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center, said often times police officers do not know what to do when they respond to a situation that involves violence between gay and lesbian partners.
"Recently, an advocate from another organization told me that an officer said that when he shows up and sees two women, he just walks away because he doesn't know how to handle the situation," Slavin told members of the Public Safety Committee.
"Same-gender domestic violence occurs with the same amount of frequency and severity as it does in the heterosexual community, affecting approximately one out of every three people."
City Councilman Richard Alarcon authored the motion to create the subcommittee.
"This issue arose out of a concern that police were perhaps treating domestic violence situations that involve the (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community differently than in the non-LGBT community in the sense that they might identify a crime of assault or battery and not recognize that it might be a domestic violence situation," Alarcon said.
Source:Xinhua
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