What struck me as I read through the information sheets footnotes is how many of the relevant studies were conducted in the 1990s or even before. Research is so scant and inadequate that a precise accounting of the problems scope is impossible, as The New York Times concluded in a 2013 investigation that was nevertheless alarming. In many departments, an officer will automatically be fired for a positive marijuana test, but can stay on the job after abusing or battering a spouse, the newspaper reported. Then it tried to settle on some hard numbers: In some instances, researchers have resorted to asking officers to confess how often they had committed abuse. One such study, published in 2000, said one in 10 officers at seven police agencies admitted that they had “slapped, punched or otherwise injured” a spouse or domestic partner. A broader view emerges in Florida, which has one of the nation’s most robust open records laws. An analysis by The Times of more than 29,000 credible complaints of misconduct against police and corrections officers there strongly suggests that domestic abuse had been underreported to the state for years. After reporting requirements were tightened in 2007, requiring fingerprints of arrested officers to be automatically reported to the agency that licenses them, the number of domestic abuse cases more than doubled—from 293 in the previous five years to 775 over the next five. The analysis also found that complaints of domestic violence lead to job loss less often than most other accusations of misconduct. A chart that followed crystallized the lax punishments meted out to domestic abusers. Said the text, Cases reported to the state are the most serious ones—usually resulting in arrests. Even so, nearly 30 percent of the officers accused of domestic violence were still working in the same agency a year later, compared with 1 percent of those who failed drug tests and 7 percent of those accused of theft. While all partner abuse is unacceptable, it is especially problematic when domestic abusers are literally the people that battered and abused women are supposed to call for help. If theres any job that domestic abuse should disqualify a person from holding, isnt it the one job that gives you a lethal weapon, trains you to stalk people without their noticing, and relies on your judgment and discretion to protect the abused against domestic abusers? The opprobrium heaped on the NFL for failing to suspend or terminate domestic abusers, and the virtual absence of similar pressure directed at police departments, leads me to believe that many people dont know the extent of domestic abuse among officers. This is somewhat surprising, since a country shocked by Ray Rices actions ought to be even more horrified by the most egregious examples of domestic abuse among police officers. Their stories end in death. Theres the recently retired 30-year veteran police officer who shot his wife and then himself in Colorado Springs earlier this summer. Theres Tacoma Police Chief David Brame, who perpetrated another murder-suicide in April. (Update: its in fact the tenth anniversary of this crime, which I missed in the ABC story.) Also in April, an Indiana news station reported on Sgt. Ryan Anders, a narcotics officer, who broke into his ex-wifes home and fatally shot her. He then turned the gun on himself. In February, Dallas police confirmed ... that a Crandall police officer shot and killed his wife before killing himself. Last year, a Nevada police officer killed his wife, his son, and then himself. And Joshua Boren, a Utah police officer, killed his wife, their two children, his mother-in-law and then himself after receiving text messages ... hours earlier threatening to leave him and take their kids and confronting him for raping her. That isnt an exhaustive survey, just a quick roundup of recent stories gleaned from the first couple pages of Google results. And statistics about blue domestic abuse are shocking in their own way.
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 13:13:12 +0000
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