City policy for handling domestic violence cases

A domestic violence program policy is hereby established to require the: (1) Use of vertical prosecution whenever possible and to minimize personnel rotations for domestic violence cases. (2) Evaluation, and as appropriate, suspension of operational policies, such as the “no drop” policy that may create artificial barriers to the effective and efficient investigation and prosecution of domestic violence cases. (3) Establishment of shared access to data and information systems between city agencies and departments that will facilitate data collection and information transmission and sharing, and eliminate redundant systems. (4) Establishment of one, common data collection system that allows access to data as needed by respective city agencies and departments to investigate and prosecute domestic violence cases, while preserving the confidentiality and security of the data and information. (5) Assessment of current policies, procedures, and processes for administering domestic violence cases and develop updated policies, procedures, and processes. (6) Promulgation of written rules that provide useful information for managing, tracking, and accounting for domestic violence cases. (7) Development of domestic violence performance metrics and data between city agencies and departments that allow the organizations to benchmark and evaluate their performance, determine how well goals are being achieved, manage their workload, and justify the need for resources. (8) Development of unified domestic violence terms, itemize the categories to be reported under domestic violence, and provide consistent and uniform definitions, terms, and jargon that facilitates domestic violence reporting and communications. (9) Development of reporting parameters for periodic, formal, and regular reports on domestic violence incidents that use consistent and regular categories (such as HRS § 709-906 related incidents) that will allow for the monitoring and tracking of the number and type of domestic violence cases. The reports must provide reliable, complete, accurate, and consistent domestic violence data that segregates the domestic violence categories under HRS § 709-906 from the categories that fall under other sections of the HRS (e.g., attempted murder, kidnapping, and robbery).