Why is domestic violence so prevalent in the homes of law enforcement officers?
The “experts” from the article offer a plausible-sounding explanation:
The “scale” he is referring to is more commonly known as the use of force continuum. Do you think that’s the main reason, or is there something more to it, perhaps the nature of individuals who choose to go into police work, or something about the work itself that makes them more apt to use violence to solve problems? Do we drill “Ask. Tell. Make” and similar patterns of behavior into our police officer’s heads so much that they’re struggling to separate work from home life?
I suspect there are many reasons and that quite a few of them overlap with why combat veterans have more problems with domestic violence.
I can’t help notice your source didn’t at all touch on rates of DV for female cops. I have no idea what those rates are but that info might be a helpful frame of reference.
Part of the reason is because of power. Being a cop or in the military can give a sense of power. Not tempered, that power can come out in a simple conflict and result in abuse.
That article is what “citation needed” was meant for. Comparing results from two studies which looked at different populations is problemmatic without a rigorous meta analysis. It seems to be creating a hypothesis based on the then-current ousting of Mirkarimi, who was a difficult person in many ways.
FYI, San Francisco Sheriffs aren’t police officers in the traditional sense. His job was an elected position that is basically a jail warden. SF county is indistinguishable from the city, the non-sheriff police are the beat cops.
Or maybe people who tend to be abusers might be attracted to certain jobs?
An ex-cop told me this, which explains both this and many other police-violence problems:
20% of cops become cops because they want to be superheroes, fighting crime and saving the community.
60% of cops just want to keep their heads down, do their jobs, and go home safe.
The last 20% of cops become cops because they like to hurt people.
If that’s true, it explains a lot. It doesn’t explain, though, why all the other cops work so hard, and ignore so much, just to protect those ~20% who enjoy hurting people.
I did a little Googling, but I can’t find the studies referred to in the article. It is premature to speculate on why it happens before we have established that it happens. At least, that’s my rule of thumb.
You see this in law enforcement, the military and in many sports. To me, possibly because I played in college football and I was in the military, it’s pretty easy to figure out.
It’s very difficult to be aggressive, physical and in some physical danger in your job, and just flick the switch and be a choir boy when you get home.
Dave down in accounting probably isn’t going to raise his voice to you if you date him. He probably isn’t all that likely to go downstairs with a baseball bat during a break in either.
You get both sides of the coin. And men (and women) who have a propensity to have violent careers have a propensity to commit violence at home. This isn’t absolute, and it doesn’t make it right, but I think it’s accurate.
I believe rates of domestic violence are comparably high among combat soldiers, around 40%. However as a society we don’t want to talk about it for fear of seeming anti military.
So part of it is having a job where you are expected to dominate people against their will, people take that mentality home with them. Plus the constant stress and ptsd doesn’t help. But both law enforcement and combat veterans have rates of dv about 4x higher than the general population.
But I really don’t know. Part of it also is the kinds of people attracted to jobs like police officer or combat veteran. Some people drawn to those jobs are by nature abusive and disrespectful.
I guess I missed your point, then. Watching other people do something is totally different from being immersed in that lifestyle and set of circumstances yourself. Similarly, being a police officer is quite different from watching a police officer on your TV.
It may be because restrictions or rules that are enacted as a result of trying to curb the abuses of the bad 20%, will probably have the effect of stifling the (legit) operations of the good 80% as well.
If extreme hypothetical: Suppose that, due to too many unjustified shootings by the bad 20%, the city decided to strip all police officers of firearms and give them Tasers only instead. In that case it is well possible that a good cop would get gunned down one day by some thugs while having only a Taser to defend himself with.
But most of the proposed changes wouldn’t stifle any good policing: Better reporting and statistics on shootings and uses of force wouldn’t do this; universal body cams wouldn’t do this; truly independent (i.e. not the local DA who works with cops) investigations into allegations against misconduct wouldn’t do this; etc.
