Some women this week questioned the wisdom of promoting three Pittsburgh police officers with allegations of domestic violence or disturbances in their past.
"You look to the police force for protection," said Eileen Foley, 26, of Downtown, a financial analyst. "To know they have domestic violence in their background makes me afraid to call them. What if they're on the man's side?"
Yvette Portis, 58, of Highland Park, questioned those officers' abilities to handle domestic violence cases objectively.
"If you're a drug dealer, you can't investigate a drug case," said Portis, an administrative assistant at the Community College of Allegheny County. "(The police) have to be above reproach."
Cmdr. George Trosky, a 27-year police veteran who was promoted from detective, was demoted in 1997 after being charged with head-butting his wife. Lt. Charles A. Rodriguez, a former sergeant who joined the police bureau in 1993, was charged in April with simple assault on allegations he struck his daughter. City police responded to Sgt. Eugene Hlavac's home in March after reports of screaming there, said Deputy Chief Paul Donaldson.
Trosky and Rodriguez were cleared of wrongdoing; Hlavac's case has been characterized as an argument.
Police Chief Nate Harper, who promoted the three officers this week, was out of state Thursday and could not be reached for comment.
Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who approved the promotions, could not be reached for comment. His spokeswoman, Joanna Doven, said the mayor would not discuss the promotions or their effects on women.
"He's not going to talk about that," Doven said.
Trosky said following his promotion ceremony this week that he has put his past behind him. "That's over," he said.
Hlavac and Rodriguez could not be reached.
Kate Barrett, 27, a Carrick resident who works in the health insurance industry, said the promotions were a "huge problem." One of her cousins, who did not live in Pittsburgh, died in a domestic dispute with a police officer, she said.
"There are already some of us who don't trust that the police, when the calls are made, are going to take them as seriously as they are," Barrett said.
Sallie Mae, 22, a receptionist from West Mifflin, called the promotions "fishy."
"It's ironic," she said. "They're supposed to be stopping domestic violence and they're not."
That police are usually the first responders is what concerns Cynthia Busis, executive director of the National Council of Jewish Women's Pittsburgh chapter in Squirrel Hill.
"These are the people that women call that are in domestic abuse situations," Busis said. "It does present a problem if those people have (domestic abuse) in their background."
The council runs a domestic violence program called the Silent Witness Initiative. The program began hanging fliers in the stalls of women's restrooms in 2003. The fliers list several area domestic violence hot-line numbers. Calls to women's shelters doubled the following year and have stayed at that level, Busis said, although she could not provide specific numbers.
Domestic violence accounted for 11 percent of all violence in the United States from 1998 to 2002, according to a 2005 U.S. Department of Justice report. About 73 percent of the 3.5 million domestic abuse victims were female, the report stated.
Pittsburgh police have been responsive to domestic violence issues and maintain a positive relationship with the Women's Center and Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh, said Janet Scott, the center's executive director. Last year, Scott said, the center housed 290 women in its shelter and handled 2,600 domestic violence calls on its hot line. It provided legal help to 2,647 nonresident adult victims last year.
As long as officers are held responsible for perpetrating domestic violence, then promoting them is an internal matter, Scott said.
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