Eva J. Paterson and A Safe Place

You may know Eva J. Paterson as being the President of the Equal Justice Society, equipped with decades of experience as a social justice lawyer. But did you know that the first lawsuit that Paterson filed, which fought against the Oakland Police Department in the 1970s, helped create A Safe Place?

In 1975, Paterson had just recently graduated from law school and understood that “there was a whole different mindset” when it came to domestic violence in that era. “There was a notion that it was okay to hit women,” she explains, which led her to become interested in changing society’s attitude towards violence. Specifically, Paterson focused on the Oakland Police Department because of the complaints she heard from female Oakland residents.

Many women shared their stories about how they called the police when they were being abused by their partner, only for the police to say they could not help the woman who called. Oftentimes the police either responded to the call but told the woman that they did not have the power to arrest the abuser, or they did not show up at all. Many women, especially Black women, felt fed up with the broken system and wanted a lawsuit to be brought against the Oakland PD. And that is exactly what Paterson did when she filed the “Scott v. Hart” case against the police department in 1976.

After watching the legal process take its place, Paterson and the police department ended up settling the case with certain stipulations. First off, the Oakland PD agreed to have every Oakland officer retrained so that when they responded to a domestic violence survivor, they could actually help the caller become safer. Secondly, money was given to help survivors in the East Bay. Because Paterson had been in touch with other who were hoping to start an organization to assist battered women in the East Bay, the settlement led to Oakland paying $5000 to help the group of women set up A Safe Place!

Paterson describes the process of getting the settlement as “watching a tree grow” when she looks back on what it took to make change in Oakland. The process happened over the course of years and even when it was finished, there was still a lot of stigma that survivors had to deal with. Paterson took what she learned from this process and, especially since her long career has dealt with a large number of social justice topics, has gone on to show that litigation can make life-changing impacts for a large number of people.