Restraining Orders, Stalking, And Death by Cop
A violent ex meets a bloody, untimely end in Southern California
I still get the daily news briefs from Orange County in Southern California, where I attended school, taught, and lived for a number of years.
I don’t often address the most fundamental component of wellness, which is physical safety and security, probably because I’ve taken care of that for myself by marrying a decent, kind and caring man. And, I live in a gated community surrounded by decent, kind, and caring neighbors in a safe, non-violent area.
There was a time in my life when I experienced relentless and unpredictable domestic violence about which authorities either could not, or voluntarily would not, do anything. My only recourse was to physically remove myself, and I did so. You can read about the situation that contributed to my baby’s death and poor quality of life for me and my daughter here, in one of my most-read articles.
Back in California this past January in Seal Beach, it was 9:30 at night when a sleeping woman and her children were awakened by an intruder on her patio. At first, it seems as though the woman didn’t know who was outside her home. During the course of the 9–1–1 call, police arrived and when they shone a light on the man, she recognized her ex-boyfriend and told the dispatcher that she had a restraining order on him.
It was 47-year-old Michael Emch, Jr. He had come to the home with a handgun (Glock), extra ammunition, and three knives.
Listening to the woman’s terrified voice on the 9–1–1 call, I was drawn back to a long-ago night after my baby died, when a man who actually had — at one time — some pretense at being a “sci fi writer” had driven his wife and at least one child to my former residence in Woodland Hills and the woman had broken in, destroying my baby’s Christmas houses, ripping up my clothes, and smashing every pot and pan in the house. Just a couple of cranked-up narcissistic losers.
Oh! I forgot. On the fully-recorded 9–1–1 call for that incident? You could hear my dog Badger yelping. He was staying in Woodland Hills temporarily, where I wrongly thought he’d be safe — because I could no longer afford to board him indefinitely. I thought Daniel Keys Moran and Amy Stout, Alan Rodgers’ ex-wife and her current spouse, a pair with behaviors very similar to Michael Emch, Jr., had killed him.
But, they did not.
God does answer prayers.
Many people will be shocked by the police bodycam footage of the fatal incident in Seal Beach on January 16.
Here it is [Warning — graphic]
I won’t lie: my reaction to this was astonishment.
I come from a world where any man who has a restraining order against him can pretty much …
Not worry about it.
Back in the early 90s, I was sitting at my desk at Family Service working and eating lunch when someone rang the back doorbell.
I went to answer it and it was no donation. It was a lady we had helped a few days prior, a single mom who lived close by.
Blood was streaming down her face from a massive head wound. She could barely speak.
It seemed that her ex-husband, on whom she had a restraining order, had been released from jail and gone straight to her house, beating her severely.
She fell into my arms and I called 9–1–1.
This man had already beaten her so many times, so severely, that the woman already had a brain tumor from repeated head trauma. A few months later, she died.
I was used to the situation with “Deanna,” the soft-spoken woman from my rape crisis group. The family members of Deanna’s serial rapist, who had kidnapped her, sexually assaulted her, and then shot her in the head and left her for dead — were allowed to sit in the courtroom and scream “Whore!” at her until I finally demanded that the judge do something.
So, here is my quandary. I oppose police shootings of innocent people, primarily young Black men. I am totally against brutal police violence. Both my brothers were beaten by cops.
But my grandfather was a Sheriff, and a good one. The cops used to come have coffee and talk shop with me at Family Service, every day at 3:00 p.m. The children’s officers in our town were wonderful, and helped as many kids as possible.
There’s no one easy answer. Many leftists want “no cops.” Defund the cops. Cops started as slave catchers and they still enforce for today’s versions of slave owners.
But my immediate reaction when the Seal Beach officers opened fire on Emch, who had at least half a dozen more chances than any Black police shooting victim ever had, was “Whoa! Thank God!”
A man was at a woman’s house, terrorizing her and her children. A man with a restraining order was at a woman’s house with a Glock, three knives, and an extra clip.
They tased this guy and he was still going to go at it.
Officers today are trained in military or paramilitary tactics and it shows on this bodycam footage. One officer is out of sight and quickly tased Emch. When he withdrew the handgun, all acted quickly and in unison.
Emch wasn’t at the woman’s house to “get money she owed him.” He was there at the minimum, to terrorize and threaten her. And, there were children in the home.
Bruce and I were talking the other day about what frightened us when we were children. He said that he and many other kids were scared of nuclear bombs. He said he had a recurring nightmare of Russian nuclear bombers flying over his neighborhood.
I told him, “The older kids used to tease us and say ‘Zodiac’s gonna get ya!’”
I was afraid of the Zodiac killer or another serial killer getting me.
It wasn’t until I was older that I realized that violent, criminal people could cause such unbelievable havoc and pain in others’ lives.
How many child abuse victims did I see in my ten years at Family Service? Countless. Countless women with missing teeth and not from “poor dental care.” Beatings went on all the time. Beatings, cuttings, and then there was the old man who brought young women from Mexico to do anything he wanted them to do, threatening them with burning their immigration papers if they didn’t obey.
I thought I “worked with” these situations. Little did I know that by associating myself with Alan Rodgers, I would become intractably involved in what was described as “The worst child custody case in the history of the Stanley Mosk Courthouse” for a decade.
I could move away from him, I could isolate my daughter from him.
But as recently as a couple of years ago, Daniel Keys Moran (I’m going to repeatedly name him — maybe this will motivate someone to remove his self-written Wikipedia entry or maybe even take other good restorative justice actions), was harassing me online with vicious attacks because my baby Anthony was born with Down Syndrome. What did I do to harm Moran or Alan’s ex, the woman who woefully had the same first name as me, Amy Stout?
Be with Alan. That was it. I cooked for the woman’s children, I taught them how to clean, I helped them go through puberty issues (bras, periods). I served them the first family Thanksgiving meal at home they ever had. I took them hiking. I talked with and encouraged them. Alan and I had nice homes for them — with pools, with their own bedrooms. That can’t be said for these others —
Times really have changed, because some of my online friends saw Moran’s recent online harassment and a couple hundred of them let him know what type of person he really is.
Listening to the Seal Beach phone call, I heard that woman’s terrified voice on the 9–1–1 call. I saw Emch acting like he was “all that” — bossing the officers around, refusing to obey them. He was standing there with a Glock in his pocket, three knives, and an extra clip and lied to the officers, saying he was there to collect money.
The world I came up in, Emch would have probably broken a window and gotten into the house before officers arrived. He may have stabbed, shot, or “just terrorized” the woman. Who knows what he would have done to the children?
The world I came up in, the effect of a restraining order had to be weighed. It wasn’t any real protection. And, sometimes judges or officers would say, “It could anger the man even more — he might come and hurt you if he sees you’ve filed a restraining order.”
Now?
Well, how can we understand this? He was there, with a gun and knives, and meant nothing good.
I see this as an entirely justified police shooting. Emch had ample opportunity to comply with the officers. He did the exact opposite.
It’s very scary when they open fire and riddle Emch with bullets. It’s rapid, coordinated fire.
The video goes so fast that you can’t really see what they saw — he took the Glock out. Their choices were let Emch shoot at and potentially injure or kill one of them, or — as I have been taught in self defense class — act to stop the threat.
I’m really not sure what is the ultimate right or wrong here, if this type of situation somehow fuels more unjustified police killings.
But I do know that for years, women with violent partners had precious little help and recourse. And I know from sad personal experience that sometimes violent partners can establish twisted relationships and act as a violent couple, seeking to harm anyone affiliated with their domestic violence targets.
My daughter, baby son, and I, were “collateral damage” in the domestic violence and vicious, devastating, decade-plus inhuman custody battle waged by Moran and Stout against my former partner Alan Rodgers.
Moran didn’t kill Badger that long-ago night in Woodland Hills. Apparently, he just kicked him. I also have a hard time seeing the cops that I talked with down at the Van Nuys station taking the kind of rapid, coordinated action that the Seal Beach cops took against Emch.
These are all difficult subjects to think about and consider.
It’s ugly. I know from my grandfather and many other officers that the last thing they want to do is respond to a domestic violence call.
It’s ugly to even think about these things. I sit here in safety, happiness, and comfort.
And I remember a time when I sat on my former living room floor in Woodland Hills believing that my best friend, rescue dog Badger, was dead, sifting the broken shards of my dead baby’s Christmas houses through my fingers and weeping.
I heard the high level of fear in the woman’s voice on the 9–1–1 call. I heard her trying to comfort the children. That’s what happened when the Moran couple attacked our home in San Dimas early in the morning on one of the girls’ birthdays. Happy birthday!
I’ve been there.
I wish we did not have this type of thing in the world. I so strongly wish that.
But until we do not: we do need cops. And somehow, amazingly, that restraining order did its job. For once. A woman and children’s lives were saved.