HOLLAND (WHTC-AM/FM) — Police have repeatedly said that the type of crime they see increasing during this pandemic and stay-home order is domestic violence.
On Sunday, May 3, 2020, Ottawa County Sheriff’s deputies arrested a man and a woman after a violent incident.
Now, Kevin Daniel Bernick Jr. faces two counts of domestic violence. He remains in Ottawa County Jail on a $10,000 cash bond for one count, and bond denied on the second.
Amanda Lynn Dyke got arrested and faces a probation violation, for the death of her and Bernick’s 7-week-old son, Anthony James Bernick, who suffocated after slipping between couch cushions on May 29, 2016, according to police records.
Dyke, sentenced on Dec. 17, 2018, after pleading no-contest to the charge, served 180 days in the county jail for involuntary manslaughter in the baby’s death.
“Unfortunately we get quite a few of these type of situations,” Sheriff’s Capt. Mark Bennett said. “Most of them are ruled accidental. The complexity in this case is, the monther did have an amount of methamphetamines in her at the time that this happened. That was, I think, part of the reason she was criminally charged.”
Dyke’s sentence included probation, set to end on Dec. 17, 2020. During Sunday’s incident, police say she violated probation. She remains in Ottawa County Jail, her bond denied.
Both she and Bernick have court appearances in the near future, but dates had not been set as of Wednesday, May 10, 2020.
Bennett says area residents are clearly very stressed — beyond worrying about catching or recovering from COVID-19, there’s the unemployment for many, the isolation and restricted movement, among other issues.
“Folks are spending more and more time together that they aren’t accustomed to, and that can add to stressful situation,” he said, adding that police is most communities are seeing an uptick in calls for help, in particular for domestic violence situations.
The increase in domestic calls for service he said, is “something I haven’t seen in 36 years of law enfocement.”
He said domestic calls can be among the more-dangerous for officers, but, these days, more resources are available to help people — from community based resources for mental-health support, food, housing and financial services to agencies like Resilience provide more tools to polcie that they didn’t have decades ago.
Like everyone else, police officers are “anxious to get back to some kind of normal,” Bennett said.
Even before the pandemic, the county had a contract, still in effect, to help Sheriff’s deputies, dispatchers, corrections officers and other county emmployees.
Every county in Michigan has a dedicated hotline number for people who need help finding resources: 211. People in situtations that are or may become domestic-violence situations can get support from Resilience, online at resiliencemi.org or by phone, via the 24-Hour Help Line: 1 (800) 848-5991 (en Español: 1 (866) 728-2131) or email GinnyP411@gmail.com.
