Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: restraining orders

It may depend on the type of restraining order. Police can and should enforce domestic violence restraining orders, but only if a copy is provided to them, or shown to them at the scene, or if it is entered into the state system. The filing of a petition does not by itself necessarily create a restraing order. The police would seem to have no right to have stopped you from entering your own home while she was trashing it, unless you were clearly so enraged they were afraid you might kill her. Smashing up one's own property is not a crime, but smashing up someone else's sure is. Since it was your home, they should have asked you for permission to enter and then gone in to investigate. Maybe they figured they were doing you a favor and keeping you out of trouble by not letting you go in, but they shouldn't have stood idly by while she smashed your property.

You should probably formally mail a copy of the restraining order to the local police department so it is in their local records and the state system, and keep a copy on you at all times to show them.

If it's not a domestic violence restraining order, I am not sure to what extent the police can enforce it. Perhaps another lawyer in here will know the answer to that. I don't off the top of my head, but most of these kinds of orders are domestic violence orders.