John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight
The state’s police commission has ordered a Bennett County sheriff’s deputy to take part in remedial training because of his mishandling of domestic violence cases.
The Law Enforcement Officers Standards and Training Commission made its vote on Deputy Kevin Curtis after a Wednesday hearing in Pierre. The hearing included more than two hours of testimony on his response to two separate domestic violence incidents in late 2017 and early 2018, and one from 2020.
Curtis was found to have engaged in conduct unbecoming of an officer for the first two incidents. For the third, during which the Bennett County sheriff argued that Curtis had followed his instructions and properly handled the situation, the commission ruled there was insufficient evidence to call his conduct unbecoming.
Curtis had already attended remedial domestic violence training after the 2017-18 incidents. One involved a 15-year-old allegedly assaulted by a family member of the child on New Year’s Eve of 2017; the other involved an assault Curtis witnessed a little over a month later before giving the assailant a ride away from the scene.
Officers are required to make an arrest in domestic violence cases in South Dakota if the officer is able to determine the primary aggressor in a physical altercation, but Curtis failed to make an arrest in either of the two cases, and failed to interview the victim in one. Victims in such cases are not legally able to decline pressing charges.
Both of the older assaults involved the same perpetrator, a woman who’d eventually plead guilty to domestic simple assault after being charged by a prosecutor. Curtis participated in domestic violence training after those incidents at the behest of an investigator with the police commission.
Complaints came from prosecutor
Bennett County State’s Attorney Sarah Harris brought a complaint against Curtis to the commission in 2021. She alleged that in spite of his additional training, he’d once again failed to properly attend to a domestic violence situation.
In that case, the perpetrator was an employee of the Bennett County Sheriff’s Department.
Curtis had attempted to resolve the years-old complaint – delayed at one point by the illness of the attorney handling the complaint for the state – through a consent decree in April.
But the commission rejected the terms of that decree, which would have involved a seven-day suspension for Curtis.
On Wednesday, the Bennett County State’s Attorney and two detectives with the state Division of Criminal Investigation testified that Curtis should have taken all three of the incidents more seriously.
In the first situation, Curtis did not interview the underage victim without others present. He’d arrived after the victim’s young sibling called 911 to report that her sister was having a seizure. Curtis talked to a man on the scene whose blood alcohol level was found to be nearly three times the legal limit, who told him that the girl didn’t have a history of seizures.
Harris later heard from the child’s grandmother, who said the girl was covered in bruises from an attack.
In the second situation, Curtis saw the perpetrator strike the victim and give him a bloody lip. Harris charged the perpetrator with assault after fielding a call from that victim.
“He witnessed domestic abuse happen right in front of him and didn’t make the mandatory arrest,” said Harris.
In the third situation, Curtis responded to an incident in Martin that would ultimately result in a felony aggravated assault charge for a man who’d worked in maintenance for the sheriff’s office.
Harris argued that he failed to interview the victim or follow through. Curtis and his boss, Bennett County Sheriff Paul Williams, said Curtis followed his instructions to get the victim away from the scene, and that the investigation was properly handed off to an outside agency.
Harris and Kelly Marnette, the assistant attorney general who prosecuted the case on Wednesday, argued that Curtis had time to interview the victim as she waited for a ride at the sheriff’s office, and that he should have.
“Did you believe that Deputy Curtis did everything he should have done?” Marnette asked Williams.
“I’m working on memory, so I really can’t say,” Williams said.
Sheriff: Deputies needs discretion
Williams said officers and deputies need to be able to use discretion. When asked by Marnette if that applies in domestic violence cases where arrests are meant to be mandatory, he said, “If we arrested everybody in Bennett County that had a fight, the jail would be full.”
In his own testimony, Curtis said the victim in the second incident from 2018 didn’t want the perpetrator charged, only removed from the home to sober up. The assault he witnessed came as the perpetrator was trying to leave the home, he said.
“It looked to me more like a ‘get out of the way and let me get the door open,’” Curtis said.
Curtis said he felt as though he’d handled any shortcomings with his performance on domestic violence calls by attending the additional training.
He learned from his mistakes, he said on Wednesday.
“I will admit that there are things I could’ve handled better,” Curtis said.
In the 2020 incident, Curtis said, he didn’t interview the victim because she didn’t want to talk to him.
“I can’t force someone to talk who doesn’t want to,” Curtis said.
After about an hour of deliberations, the commission reconvened to make a vote.
Before the group cast its unanimous vote to formally determine that Curtis had gone astray of his law enforcement obligations in the first two incidents, Lincoln County State’s Attorney and commission member Tom Wollman said it’s important for the people of South Dakota to know how seriously police officers ought to take domestic violence.
“We know that victims of violence, particularly domestic violence, often will be abused for years before reaching out to law enforcement,” Wollman said. “How law enforcement responds to those calls is of the utmost importance.”
Curtis will be required to complete 12 hours of domestic violence training by 2025 to maintain his law enforcement certification.