Last week will go down as not on­ly one of the worst weeks of tragedy that this coun­try has seen in a long time but al­so one of the worst in­volv­ing the deaths of women.

No soon­er than na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel, in­clud­ing Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, had con­clud­ed a me­dia con­fer­ence last Mon­day on mea­sures to deal with crime, came an­oth­er ter­ri­ble wave of killings in which four women lost their lives in con­sec­u­tive days.

While we ac­cept that crimes of pas­sion are of­ten dif­fi­cult to pre­dict, what we heard this week af­ter the mur­der of Ellen Tr­is­hana Mo­hammed in Guayagua­yare, point­ed to a need to deal with ir­re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice

Po­lice have dis­put­ed the claims made by fam­i­ly mem­bers that they called for as­sis­tance six times with­out a re­sponse in the weeks lead­ing up to her death. Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer ASP Sheri­don Hill said two re­ports were lodged at the Ma­yaro Po­lice Sta­tion and on both oc­ca­sions, the po­lice re­spond­ed.

That may very well be so, but the fam­i­ly’s claims on­ly prompt­ed more women to come for­ward with per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ences of how they were treat­ed when seek­ing help against abusers.

On one oc­ca­sion, po­lice mock­ing­ly asked a woman, “What you com­ing to re­port the man for?” go­ing on to tell her she “don’t come when things are sweet,” in ref­er­ence to her sex­u­al life.

Not on­ly was this a most ab­hor­rent way to treat a vic­tim but it was down­right stu­pid. Since when does any­one go to a po­lice sta­tion to re­port that things are “sweet” be­tween them and their part­ner?

An­oth­er woman said an of­fi­cer’s re­sponse when she went to re­port abuse, was “What do you ex­pect if you look­ing so?”

A third woman, af­ter fil­ing a re­port and re­turn­ing to her home, found her­self sub­ject to a phone call from a male of­fi­cer, who, hav­ing got her num­ber through her state­ment, want­ed her to know how at­tract­ed he was to her and was in­ter­est­ed in tak­ing her out on a date. The woman, quite right­ly, re­mind­ed the of­fi­cer her rea­son go­ing to the sta­tion was to seek pro­tec­tion and not his com­pan­ion­ship.

These are just a few of the myr­i­ad of dis­gust­ing ex­pe­ri­ences fe­male vic­tims have had with the Po­lice Ser­vice.

If, there­fore, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty arms hope to get a grip on the wave of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence that has been flood­ing us late­ly, this is one of the first places to be­gin.

The Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau and Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty must broad­en the chan­nels through which women who have been dis­re­gard­ed or mis­treat­ed when seek­ing help can file com­plaints against the po­lice. Of­fi­cers like those men­tioned above should have no place what­so­ev­er in an or­gan­i­sa­tion that bears the mot­to, ‘To pro­tect and serve’.

There is work ahead for the TTPS ex­ec­u­tive, since they too are re­spon­si­ble for iden­ti­fy­ing and elim­i­nat­ing the ob­jec­ti­fi­ca­tion, sex­ism and ne­glect women face from time to time.

The re­sponse must al­so in­clude re­vis­it­ing leg­isla­tive mea­sures against those who breach pro­tec­tion or­ders, in­clud­ing against women who al­low men in­to their space while pro­tec­tion or­ders stand.

These mea­sures, we know, will not sud­den­ly end all do­mes­tic vi­o­lence deaths but are most cer­tain­ly gaps that must be plugged if we hope to save more lives.