POUGHKEEPSIE – To mark Domestic Violence Advocacy Day in New York, State Senator Steve Saland announced the passage of several pieces of legislation that enhance the safety and the amount of protection available to victims of domestic violence as well as redefining key language that strengthens law enforcements’ ability to intervene before things escalate.

Saland was accompanied at a Poughkeepsie news conference, by a number of public officials, community leaders, and advocates who are all active in domestic violence issues at a Poughkeepsie news conference on Monday.

“This is an effort to ensure a greater degree of protection by way of lengthening orders of protection,” he said. “It also affords access to services more readily in certain situations that wouldn’t otherwise be available and before the session is over I think we will deal with a couple of more issues that are going to ensure far greater protection for victims than currently exist.”

Saland also noted certain language is now defined within state law that allows federal authorities to confiscate firearms after misdemeanor charges as well as gives judges the power to consider the victims’ safety when setting conditions for an offender’s bail.

Hopefully by tilting the playing field in the direction of the victims they will be given a much better opportunity to get on with their lives, he said.

The chairwoman of the Citizens Advisory Committee on Domestic Violence, Leah Feldman, said there have been four domestic violence related homicides in Dutchess County since July, some of which may have ended differently had the victims been better protected by the system.

In three out of these four instances, she said, the victims were making attempts to leave their abusers.

“When a victim of domestic violence tries to leave that is the ultimate loss of control for an offender and they might do any number of things to gain that control back and sometimes that results in taking the life of their victim,” she said. “That’s what we try to prevent through our system and through being able to be held in jail and having safety measures for victims of domestic violence.”

Dutchess County Legislature Chairman Robert Rolison said that the Legislature wants to be supportive and in light of these recent statistics, has called upon the Citizens Advisory Committee on Domestic Violence to make recommendations as to the county’s response to domestic violence.