(Trigger warning: Domestic violence, pet abuse)

 

Dear Mom,

I told you about my best day in jail – the day Transform Dane became official. I don’t think I’ve ever told you about my best memory from law enforcement. It didn’t feel like there was a reason to. It wasn’t flashy or dramatic, not high speed or award-worthy; not front-page or framed. It took coming to jail to realize that the absence of all those things contributed, not detracted from the value.

On New Year’s Eve in 2017, I was a patrol officer on the south side of Madison. I checked into a call already waiting for me. It was a “cold scene battery,” reported by the victim’s father, who was there with her. A routine, common complaint to respond to. No lights or sirens needed.

When I arrived, the look on her dad’s face was desperation. She sat behind, quietly. In a rushed whisper, he shared, “Her boyfriend is beating her, I just want her to come stay with us.”

It took no special forensic skills to find the evidence – she was covered in bruises on her face and body, all in various stages of healing. I was five years into the job and had hundreds of domestic violence calls under my belt. Even among that, this ranked in the upper tier in severity by first glance.

Her first statement to me, her summary of the problem, will remain forever etched in my mind.

“I’m worried he’s going to kill my fish.”

As the conversation progressed and hard-fought trust came out in the form of details, an existence spent in terror and abuse unfolded. She was with her dad now because she had fled with their toddler child. She had left their shared apartment behind in a hurry, with minimal packing.. All of her possessions were in danger of destruction or damage, she conceded with resignation. 

And yet, she kept circling back to one thing: “I just really am worried he will kill the fish.”

I spent the evening running a standard police investigation of their violent history with that single statement. It meant photos of injuries, notes for a report, and paperwork for the District Attorney’s office. A large snowstorm rolled in as the evening shift inched closer to the 2018 New Year. 

At the conclusion of the “real police work,” the question of the fish remained. She had agreed to go stay at her parents’ home on the other side of town. Hypothetically, it could’ve been time to head back to the station, write the report, and go home. Other officers would be tasked with locating and arresting the boyfriend, already avoiding police. 

Killing pets as part of domestic violence has a statistically significant correlation with domestic homicide. As a police officer, having heard and seen these situations firsthand, I didn’t need the statistics to understand the chill. When desperation to hurt another human is so extreme that killing an innocent pet is “the next best thing,” it has reached absolute crisis-level intimate partner violence. It is an emergency, without the lights and sirens and heavy police presence you see on the news or movies.

While the winter weather intensified, with threats of near-whiteout conditions, there wasn’t a chance we were leaving the fish behind. So, we were off to their shared apartment. 

When we got to their shared apartment, I watched her strong facade melt as we walked into an absolutely demolished apartment. Their baby’s crib was smashed. Bleach dumped over everything. Even the fridge contents were used to destroy – jars emptied and eggs smashed all over walls and floors. 

We made a beeline for the kitchen where thankfully beautiful beta fish swam happily, unharmed. 

She threw what she could into a few odd bags, and we stuffed my squad car with whatever could fit inside a Plexiglass cage on wheels. As critical items left the apartment, snow drifts reached my knees. 

The fish was the last thing we moved to the squad car. The car was warmed up to keep its water temperature safe. Its bowl was tucked in safely, wedged into a vehicle built for police work, not fish. It was given the utmost care – after everything, no harm was coming to this fish, so beautifully and vibrantly alive. 

He had used the fish as a means of extending control over her if she fled. Now fleeing, the fish needed to come along. It was more than a fish. It was an early symbol of that control being restored to her.

The roads were atrocious by the time it came to travel across the city with a roughly packed apartment, a victim, and her fish. The few cars on the road skidded everywhere, dangerously close to collision each time. The marked squad car offered no additional safety against cars trying to navigate snow and ice around us. There was no way I was letting this mission end in anything but success. Not tonight. 

I turned on the red and blue squad car lights to keep other cars as far away from me as possible. I drove to this “battery” call without them, and left it with them. There was a fish emergency. 

As I flicked the lights on, the only thought that crossed my mind was, “We’re just going to ask for forgiveness, not permission, today.”

I never had to. The New Year came, and her boyfriend was arrested soon thereafter by someone else, on my day off. We both quietly and diligently went through the court process with it. She continued living with her parents, safely, when last I saw her in 2018. 

I can still shut my eyes in jail in 2025 and picture the red and blue lights splashing off a city covered in fresh snow that night. As far back as 2018, I was in denial but aware that alcoholism was taking over and demons from chronic trauma were following me. I was increasingly disillusioned with the job. But in that moment, it was a reminder of what it feels like to have a human, genuine reaction to the world. Existing in a job that prioritizes rules and laws to an extreme, it was freedom to break them in the name of something stronger. It was the pull of human dignity and respect. 

It echoes today. There’s no “Standard Operating Procedure” guide inside the Dane County Jail, no “Best Practices” document, but if there were, I’d imagine it might warn against filing a federal lawsuit against the jail you’re still living in. It might also caution against co-founding a non-profit critical of the jail’s misuse of solitary confinement when you live in the very jail that could, at any moment, place you back in it.

Realizing the rapid and egregious toll that solitary confinement takes on mind, body, and soul cast aside the relevance of these common sense warnings. Realizing the magnitude of the overuse of DCJ “seg” re-prioritized what my “rehabilitation” would consist of. It became about restoring human dignity and respect in the very building where I contributed to stripping it. 

Mom, in some ways, the rebuilding began with a squad car and a fish, and with that, salvation through defiance. It continues today, with “words as weapons”.

 

Still me, 

Eli