Calera Police Chief Don Hyde attended the fourth annual Conference on Crimes Against Women this week in Dallas.

The conference offers the most practical, current and relevant training provided by the country’s leading experts in the fields of intervention, investigation and prosecution for the full range of crimes committed against women, according to the Web site www.ccawonline.org

Federal, state and local law enforcement officers; domestic violence, sexual assault and homicide investigators; probation and parole officers; state and federal prosecutors; nurses; victim advocates and domestic violence shelter staff gathered again this year in Dallas to participate in workshops, computer labs and case studies that will address all types of crimes in which women are targeted.

This year’s agenda addressed issues related to the prevention, investigation and prosecution of domestic violence, stalking, sexual assault, serial murder, Internet-related offenses and other crimes. 

“Domestic violence is quickly becoming an Oklahoma epidemic,” said Sunshine Gross, editor of a newsletter by the Oklahoma Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.

According to Gross, 19 Oklahomans have been killed by domestic abusers since January of this year.

In Calera, Vivian Pierce, 28, and her mother Rebecca Pierce, 56, were murdered in January during a domestic dispute, according to police. Damon Butler, identified as Vivian’s boyfriend, was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. He has a preliminary hearing scheduled for May 23.

“As a small police department in Oklahoma that actively takes a proactive approach to fighting the crime of domestic violence, this tragedy was hard on our community as well as my officers,” Hyde told the OCADVSA newsletter.