Explaining limitations of ankle monitors, orders of protection after Hazelwood Terrace killing

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Walter Balkum was arrested and indicted back in June for felony assault against his girlfriend. She was issued an order of protection and he got an ankle monitor.

Despite those precautions, police say he went to her Hazelwood Terrace home and beat her to death.

News10NBC’s Antonina Tortorello looked into how ankle monitors work in Monroe County. She found out not every ankle monitor is the same, and they aren’t always tracked.

Some monitors use GPS tracking which uses satellites, WiFi, and cell towers to find a person’s location either actively in real time or passively — where information is downloaded to a system. Others use radio frequency transmission.

These ankle monitors alert authorities whenever a person leaves or enters a certain area. Typically, it tracks each “in and out” and will alert authorities if a person goes out of range.

Assistant Dristrict Attorney Patrick Gallagher says the ones the court often uses for when a defendant is released before a trial, like in Balkum’s case, are very basic.

“Just really tells the court system if someone is at a location or if someone is at a location during curfew hours,” so if someone’s at their house between the hours of lets say 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. or something like that. And it can tell the court system if they’re not following that ankle bracelet,” Gallagher said.

So in the case of Balkum’s ankle monitor, there isn’t anyone monitoring them in real time and the monitor can’t tell authorities where a person is at all times.

Gallagher says GPS monitoring is something they ask for and can be very helpful in cases like this one.

Melikah Bruner had an order of protection against Balkum. It’s a tool used quite a bit in domestic violence cases.

An order of protection is issued by a court. Most times, it orders someone to keep a specific distance from a certain person or party. An order of protection also gives a victim the opportunity to go with police to grab their belongings and get any important documents from that person. It also means they have to turn over any guns to law enforcement. The order allows the protected person to terminate a lease if they have to.

But can an order of protection really stop someone from seeing the protected party?

“No, it can’t do that. It doesn’t have those magical powers, but it is a deterrent and it does allow us to oftentimes charge someone with a felony level crime if they violate the order of protection,” Gallagher says.

Gallagher explains that an order of protection can be violated in a number of ways, but if it is, it means the crime can be charged as a felony. He says no matter what it is, it becomes criminal contempt in the first degree, so it lets them raise the level of charges if violated.

RELEATED: Advocates say new center could help prevent domestic violence deaths like Melikah Bruner’s

A.I. assisted with the formatting of this story. Click here to see how WHEC News 10 uses A.I.