On Staten Island, serial domestic abusers are going to have start wearing GPS tracking units that will text their victims when they get too close. "To many domestic abusers, an order of protection is just a piece of paper," Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan said yesterday, announcing the plan. "It does not deter these relentless scofflaws from constantly terrorizing and attacking their victims. I refuse to stand by and continue to watch this happen time and again without trying to do something about it."
The GPS units, which will be operated by a security firm in Atlanta, will go off when an offender breaches an exclusionary zone (typically a 1,000 foot radius around a place like a home or office). Even better, the offenders will be forced to foot the $10-a-day cost of the monitoring.
As far as the DA's office is concerned the idea is a no-brainer. According to its stats "almost half of all domestic abusers are repeat offenders and about 25 percent of all domestic violence cases in the borough include a charge for violating a court order of protection." The program, dubbed the Domestic Violence GPS Initiative, will start soon with a few dozen offenders who have been found guilty of domestic violence. A judge will still have to approve the GPS monitoring.
