Tracking strengthens protection orders

Most of the time, relationships end sadly, with couples now apart wondering how they will fill the hours without each other.

But sometimes they end with more than the fear of the unknown.

They end with hours filled with fear. Fear that the person angry over the end of the relationship will do them harm.

In these cases, the frightened person, usually a woman, might go to court and ask for an order of protection.

But a piece of paper cannot always turn down the heat under boiling anger.

And, in the most horrible of cases, cannot keep the woman from harm.

An order of protection did not stop Cindy Bischof's ex-boyfriend from stalking her. And ultimately confronting the Arlington Heights woman outside of her Elmhurst real estate office in March, and killing her. He then killed himself.

Cindy Bischof's family vigorously sought - and got - a new state law aimed at protecting others who are being stalked and threatened with violence.

Last week, Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed a new law that gives judges the authority to order individuals who violate an order of protection to wear a GPS monitoring device.

Orders of protection are difficult to enforce. Police cannot always know when they have been violated, or at least know soon enough to prevent violence or death. This technology will give law enforcement better and quicker information on when an order of protection has been violated. The potential victim will be alerted on a corresponding device if the person is, for example, in their home or place of work.

Judges must use their discretion to both protect those in real danger of harm and assure GPS tracking is ordered in cases where it is truly warranted, when there has been clear intention of ignoring and violating the order associated with intimidation and the very real threat of the potential for violence. We do know this. Cindy Bischof did everything in her power to keep her ex-boyfriend away from her, including getting an order of protection. It was violated at least three times.

And this is not an isolated case. There have too many other instances of women being killed or injured by former spouses or boyfriends who feared an order of protection as much as they would a comic book. Hopefully being attached to a tracking device, or knowing that such might be ordered by a judge, will prove to be an effective deterrent.

Yet we also know that a law that improves tracking of those who would violate orders of protection to do harm is not alone the answer to ending domestic violence, a crime that was committed 115,282 times in Illinois in 2005.

But it will help would-be victims of these crimes to have stronger faith that orders of protection will actually protect them because it will be that much harder to disobey them.