Stay Safe, Stay Protected
Video Transcribed: What is a VPO? Hello, I’m Ty Smith, an Oklahoma City area attorney with Wirth Law Office, and a VPO stands for victim protective order. You also might commonly hear it be called a protective order. These are orders issued by a court, logically by a judge, to help protect an individual or an individual’s children from an alleged abuser or harasser. They are available for those that have been physically abused, stalked, harassed, definitely, or they’ve been threatened with some imminent physical harm.
This can come from a family member, it can come from a member of your own household, but it’s also available to a person outside of your household if that person who you’re seeking a protective order against has stalked and/or harassed you or your children. Now, this doesn’t exactly come… What it does is, will be very specific and will be ordered by the judge, it puts limits on an alleged abuser’s ability to make physical contact with the person who the order’s protecting.
It can tell an alleged abuser to stay away from the individual or the person’s children, stay away from the children’s schools or their home. It can cut off communications. It can say you can’t talk to one another. And here’s a big one, it can compel the alleged abuser to give up their weapon. If it’s known they have a weapon in the house or in their person, the court order can say you have to give that up until this protective order expires.
Now, if you have a victim protective order and that’s violated, you need to call the police because that individual can be arrested on a contempt of a court order. So as soon as the person steps over out of the bounds, call the police and they will come and say, they’ll read the order, “Okay. You’re right. You’re in violation of it, got to take you away.” All right.
Now, this sounds like something that you might need to talk to someone about on how to get one. I’m going to make a follow-up video on how to get one exactly, but if you need to talk to someone about potentially going to do that for you, going to the hearing potentially in which a protective order is requested and possibly granted, I can talk to you about that. I’ll also do criminal law matters. But once more, my name is Oklahoma victim protective order lawyer Ty Smith, Wirth Law Office. You can find me at theoklahomacityattorney.com, where you can call my office at (405) 888-5400. I thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you.
