When Police Are Called to a House
ORC 2919.25 — the encounter the legislature wrote its own rules for
A call to a residence is the one police encounter the legislature wrote separate rules for, and the rules run in several directions at once. Officers arrive under a statutory preference about arrest. Every agency has to have a written policy for the call. The court has an order available at the first appearance that is not available in most cases. And the person who made the call does not control what happens afterwards. This page describes that machinery, for whoever in the house needs to understand it.
Who handles this in Ohio: Ohio State Bar Association lawyer referral; and legal aid programs and the state offices, listed in the Ohio directory.
The offense itself has three routes, and they are not the same conduct.
- Knowingly causing or attempting to cause physical harm to a family or household member.
- Recklessly causing serious physical harm to a family or household member.
- By threat of force, knowingly causing a family or household member to believe the offender will cause imminent physical harm.
| Route | With no prior | What priors do |
|---|---|---|
| RouteCausing or attempting physical harm | With no priorFirst degree misdemeanor | What priors doA prior conviction of the kinds the section lists turns it into a felony |
| RouteRecklessly causing serious physical harm | With no priorFirst degree misdemeanor | What priors doThe same ladder applies |
| RouteThreat of force causing fear of imminent harm | With no priorFourth degree misdemeanor | What priors doTwo or more priors make it a first degree misdemeanor |
The ladder in the section has more rungs than that table. It reaches the fourth and third degrees of felony depending on how many prior offenses there are and what they were, it counts offenses of violence against a family or household member and substantially similar offenses from other states, and it carries separate enhancements where the offender knew the victim was pregnant. Which rung a case sits on is a question about a particular record, and the section itself is the place to read the whole ladder.
Family or household member is a defined term and it is wider than people expect. It reaches a spouse, a person living as a spouse, a former spouse, a parent, a foster parent, a child, and relatives by blood or marriage who live or have lived with the person. A relationship that has ended does not take a case out of the section.
Where the relationship does not meet that definition, the same conduct is usually charged as assault under its own section instead. That is a different offense with a different name on the paperwork, and it does not carry the protection order machinery this page describes, which is why the relationship between two people is the first thing the charge turns on rather than a detail.
There is a preferred course of action, and declining it has to be written down. Ohio makes arrest the preferred course of action in a domestic violence case and in a protection order violation. Where an officer has reasonable cause to believe the offense was committed and does not arrest and detain, the officer shall articulate in the written report of the incident a clear statement of the reasons for not doing so. That report exists whichever way the call went, and it is a record about the officer's decision rather than only about the incident.
Agencies are also required to have a written policy for these calls, and the statute puts specific content in it. An officer investigating a report of domestic violence or a protection order violation has to advise the person of the availability of a temporary protection order under the criminal section and of a protection order or consent agreement under the civil one. Where a felonious assault has been committed and the offender is the primary physical aggressor, the section directs the officer to arrest that person and detain them until a warrant can be obtained.
The person who called cannot drop the charges. This is the single most common misunderstanding about these cases. A criminal charge belongs to the State, not to the complainant. Somebody who wants the case to stop can say so to the prosecutor, and prosecutors weigh that, but the decision is not theirs to make and a case can proceed on other evidence whatever they want. It cuts the other way too: a complainant who has changed their account is not thereby free of a subpoena.
Two different protection orders exist and they run on separate tracks, which is why the letters get mixed up constantly.
| Order | Where it comes from | What it is attached to |
|---|---|---|
| OrderTemporary protection order | Where it comes fromORC 2919.26, on motion in the criminal case | What it is attached toThe criminal case, usually entered at the initial appearance and running as a condition of release |
| OrderCivil protection order | Where it comes fromORC 3113.31, a separate civil action the person files | What it is attached toNothing criminal. It exists whether or not anybody is charged, and has its own hearing |
Violating either one is its own criminal offense under its own section, separate from whatever the underlying case was. A person under an order who is invited back by the protected party is still under the order: only the court that issued it can change it.
There is a firearms consequence that sits outside Ohio law entirely. Federal law bars possession by a person subject to a qualifying protection order and by a person convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, and that bar operates whatever a state court says about the sentence. It is the reason a first degree misdemeanor in this area can have a longer reach than its degree suggests.
“Am I being charged, and is there a protection order.”
This describes the criminal and civil machinery and nothing else. It is not safety planning, it does not say who should do what, and it is not a defense guide: everyone in a house has rights and the same page is read by people on both sides of a call. Whether particular conduct meets the section, who the primary physical aggressor was, and what a protection order should contain are decided on records by courts. Ohio has a statewide domestic violence hotline and every county has victim advocates and a public defender's office, and each of those does something this page cannot. A licensed Ohio attorney is who advises anybody on either side of one of these cases.
Sources for this section (11)
- ORC 2919.25 — Domestic violence
- ORC 2935.03 — Arrest without a warrant, and the preferred course of action in a domestic violence case
- ORC 2935.032 — The written policy every agency must adopt for responding to these calls
- ORC 2919.26 — Temporary protection order in a criminal domestic violence case
- ORC 2929.24 — Definite jail terms for misdemeanors
- ORC 2929.14 — Definite prison terms for felonies
- ORC 2903.13 — Assault
- ORC 2903.11 — Felonious assault
- ORC 3113.31 — Domestic violence civil protection order
- ORC 2919.27 — Violating a protection order or consent agreement
- ORC 2923.13 — Having weapons while under disability
Legal information, not legal advice. Verified as of September 2026. Applying it to a particular situation is the work of a licensed Ohio attorney.