Officer-Involved Domestic Violence — An Omnipresent but Underreported Phenomenon that Needs to be Addressed Now
The demonstrations against police brutality and racial injustice that have taken place in the United States and across the world in 2020 initially led to both House Democrats and the GOP to draft legislation aimed at reforming police practices nationwide. The bulk of the proposed legislation is caught up on Capitol Hill, and we’ll have to wait and see what — if anything — a regime change does for the momentum generated by the year’s ongoing struggles for justice and peace.
Reformers seek to address needless aggression committed by officers in the line of duty, and a corollary to this effort is the need to address violence committed by officers against partners and children at home. Indeed, one of the most underreported examples of law enforcement abuse is officer-involved domestic violence (OIDV), and it has historically been hard for researchers to understand the full scope of the problem given the widespread lack of statistics kept on OIDV by law enforcement departments nationwide.
Nevertheless, studies of the phenomenon found the number of officers who abuse their families in any given department to be no less than the national average of 10–15 percent, and possibly as high as 20–40 percent. The latter studies are now close to 30 years old, but experts are not optimistic much has changed. Departments are loathe to portray themselves in a negative light by acknowledging this abuse, and a code of silence prevents officers from speaking out against their colleagues and punishes those that do.
“Domestic violence happens behind closed doors, and police doors are closed tighter than most,” said Mike Milnor, a 33-year law enforcement veteran, former police chief, and founder of Justice 3D, a consultancy that provides domestic violence response training to police departments.
The demonstrations across 2020 brought the issue of police reform into the national conversation, opening the door for renewed analysis and a hopefully an honest appraisal of its own deficiencies. But the nationwide scrutiny on police is also worrisome to many OIDV researchers, as officers prone to abuse will likely take this stress home with them and take it out on their families.
And so, it is of critical importance that OIDV be included in the conversation when we talk about police reform. OIDV victims are at a particular disadvantage given the knowledge and connections of an officer/abuser, which often precludes victims from getting the help they need, and in no just world should partners and families have to feel the kind of helpless terror inherent in domestic abuse.
Below we’ll look at why attempts to address OIDV have historically had trouble gaining traction, with the hope that a more robust understanding of these gaps can finally bring about serious reform.
Compiling these statistics (or not)
There are approximately 18,000 law enforcement departments in the United States, but they are independent and fragmented, with not a lot of policy cohesion across departments, Milnor said. As such, there is no comprehensive database that catalogues officer-involved domestic violence, or even a standard definition of what constitutes abuse. The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) has drafted example OIDV policies for departments to adopt, as have some states, but implementation and enforcement is almost never obligatory.
“It’s amazing how often when we do these [training seminars], chiefs come to us and tell us they have no policy on how to deal with an officer-involved case,” said Mark Wynn, a decorated former police lieutenant and educator specializing in domestic violence training in police departments.
Studies of departments across the country show that internal statistics on OIDV are not often kept. Scholars have often had to rely on news reports and Google alerts for statistics and investigations undertaken by organizations such as the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the National Center for Women & Policing. Some studies have even relied on officers self-reporting abuse, but the career implications of a domestic violence charge may lead to underreporting on these self-reporting questionnaires.
Moreover, the availability of funding to conduct research into law enforcement changes depending on the political tide. Federal funding for this kind of research became essentially nonexistent following the 2016 election, said Annelise Mennicke, Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, as the Jeff Sessions-led Justice Department chilled its relationship with researchers studying law enforcement and redirected funds available through the National Institute of Justice (the government-funded research arm of the US Department of Justice) to less controversial ends.
“It takes money to do these projects, and there are not a lot of places that funds this kind of research,” Mennicke says.
Additionally, it can be hard to trace where violent law enforcement officers end up, as they are often quietly placed on leave or reassigned, with no lasting professional or criminal repercussions. This makes for a system full of abusive officers. According to a 2005 study published in the Journal of Family Violence, “twenty-three percent of the accused officers had a history of at least one prior [OIDV] report on file with the police department and five percent had two or more priors.”
Officer personnel files that could help make the scope of the problem more apparent are generally off-limits to the public in the United States. These files might be accessible if the documents are released as part of a court filing against an officer or through extensive use of the Freedom of Information Act, says Denise Gamache, executive director of the Battered Women’s Justice Project, but even then, “good luck getting access” to these files.
Why it is hard to report an abusive officer
The problems caused by a lack of a national database of violent officers is an oversight compounded by inconsistent methods of screening officer candidates.
“You do find that a certain percentage of folks are very controlling and very authoritarian and they only reason they want the position is the control and authority,” Mike Milnor says. “And those [people] are dangerous and those are the ones we try to weed out.”
Unfortunately, when violent individuals are able to become officers, they can use the tactics of policing to become better abusers.
“[M]any of the characteristics required to be a police officer, such as the ability to take control of situation and people, the ability to exercise authority, and the willingness to use violence to gain compliance are the identifying characteristics of a batterer,” writes Diane Wetendorf, a longtime anti-domestic violence advocate and author of When the Batterer Is a Law Enforcement Officer: A Guide for Advocates.
Consequently, victims of OIDV often find themselves in an especially helpless situation if their abusers are police. Officers have a thorough understanding of the law, know the locations of shelters, and are likely friendly with the officers called to investigate the abuse, lessening the chance of charges filed or an arrest. Higher-ups at a police department might have an interest in shielding the officer from repercussions, while prosecutors may be unwilling to pursue OIDV complaints because they need those same police officers for help in other cases.
“I am personally aware of situations in agencies where there was a domestic situation, and one of the [high-ranking officers] said ‘Hey, let’s separate, you’re not going to lose your job,’” Milnor said.
The Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban, commonly known as the “Lautenberg Amendment,” is a federal law passed in 1996 that makes it a felony for individuals convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence to possess firearms and ammunition.
Additionally, victims are often scared to report abuse because they fear the possible professional ramifications a conviction might have for their spouse, a stressor that would almost certainly lead to more — and increased — abuse.
(Theoretically, the statutes of the Lautenberg Amendment only apply if they are convicted of a misdemeanor. Thus, as the US Justice Department notes, even “if a police officer is convicted of murdering his/her spouse or has a protection order placed against them, they may, under federal law, still be able to possess a service revolver while on duty, whereas if they are convicted of a qualifying misdemeanor they are prohibited from possessing any firearm or ammunition at any time.”)
Putting laws on the books
Some instances of officer-involved domestic violence apparently been so egregious that they’ve prompted states to pass legislation specifically addressing this crime.
In spring 2003, divorce filings revealed that Tacoma, Washington Chief of Police David Brame was routinely abusive to his wife. City government officials were apparently aware of the abuse but chose to overlook it, with the City Manager saying at a press conference that Brame was a good guy and that the city doesn’t get involved with private matters. But when the revelations went public, Brame murdered his wife in a parking lot in front of their children and committed suicide.
In response, Washington’s State Attorney General enacted a law that all police departments in the state must have a comprehensive OIDV policy that includes procedure for investigating and disciplining abusive officers. Oregon followed suit, but as of today, these are the only states that mandate departments across have policies specifically addressing OIDV.
But while jurisdictions may pledge to be much more serious about OIDV, investigations have historically resulted in little censure. According to the Journal of Family Violence, 69 percent of officers were immediately suspended from duty (and seventeen percent arrested) following a domestic violence report, but “the final administrative disposition of the majority (92 percent) of cases resulted in no action.” (A similar trend is found in response to accusations of sexual misconduct by police. An extensive 2007 investigation by the Philadelphia Inquirer revealed that from 1992–2002 the “department dismissed most [accusations] as groundless, or unprovable.”)
Mike Milnor is hopeful that departments will reform screening and internal investigation processes, while Mark Wynn recommends jurisdictions employ a “dual track” method of investigating OIDV, in which investigations are carried out simultaneously and independently by the department and the internal affairs department, with neither investigation crossing paths. Federal funding for departments could also be based on the implementation of OIDV guidelines, Milnor says.
But the onus is on police departments to take OIDV seriously, to redress past deficiencies, to provide better support for victims, and to minimize future abuse.
Law enforcement departments must institute policies that guarantee impartial investigations, mandate serious repercussions, and develop better psychological profiling mechanisms to vet current and future law enforcement officers. Additionally, they need to implement a culture of much more rigorous ethical expectations overall and provide officers with constructive ways of dealing with the pressures of their jobs. One study reports that “Officers who had PTSD were four times more likely to report using physical violence,” and that officers with issues with alcohol are between four and eight times more likely to be violent.
Police reform shouldn’t even be a partisan issue — it’s to absolutely everyone’s benefit that we hold the most powerful members of society accountable for their actions. There is nothing just about the people we entrust to keep us safe being allowed to terrorize their own families and communities with impunity. It’s time for law enforcement department to take officer-involved domestic violence seriously — perhaps for the first time — and work to put an end to this horrifying and brutal phenomenon.
“I personally believe [OIDV] is the biggest ethics test we’ve ever faced in policing,” Wynn said. “We’re willing to join the bandwagon to lock up domestic violence offenders, but we’re not willing to lock up our own. I ask chiefs all the time, ‘How much crime do you want your officers to commit?’ And they look at you like you’re crazy and say ‘None.’ I say, ‘Then tell me how many of your officers have been arrested for DV over the past ten years.’ They don’t say anything.”
Notes:
· Domestic violence statutes vary from state to state and can be hard to pin down. A 2017 report by Muckrock reported that their “request for domestic violence response policies for state police departments in all 50 states found 28 states willing to release the policies free of charge, or for a small fee. Twelve states reported having no such policy. Four — Hawaii, Kansas, New Hampshire, South Dakota — rejected the request, arguing that granting it would compromise security, reveal confidential law enforcement techniques, or disrupt the operation of government.”
Journalists and independent researchers have nevertheless put together databases that chronicle this phenomenon. USA Today created an enormous database of police misconduct records, searchable by officer name and jurisdiction. As journalists John Kelly and Mark Nichols write, the records “obtained from thousands of state agencies, prosecutors, police departments and sheriffs…detail at least 200,000 incidents of alleged misconduct, much of it previously unreported. The records obtained include more than 110,000 internal affairs investigations by hundreds of individual departments and more than 30,000 officers who were decertified by 44 state oversight agencies.”
Other resources to track OIDV include blogs dedicated to the purpose, such as Behind the Blue Wall.
· OIDV is a problem around the world. A 2019 report by the UK’s Bureau for Investigative Journalism revealed that OIDV was reported almost four times a week for three years with a 3.9 percent conviction rate, while an ACLU study on police corruption revealed that the Puerto Rico Police Department “recorded nearly 1,500 domestic violence complaints against police officers from 2005 to 2010. At least 84 still-active officers have been arrested two or more times for domestic violence.”
However, like in the USA, repercussions for (and even acknowledgement of OIDV) is similarly tepid. UK’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism report found that “less than a third of the forces that responded to the Bureau’s FOI requests have specific procedures in place to ensure an impartial response when their employees are accused of domestic abuse.”
And in the entire United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime-commissioned “Preventing and Responding to Domestic Violence Trainee’s Manual for Law Enforcement and Justice Sectors in Viet Nam,” for example, the sole reference to officer abuse is in Article 42: “Staff, officers, civil servants and employees in the people’s armed forces committing domestic violence and supposedly being charged for civil violations according to paragraph 1 of this Article, shall be reported to the Heads of their institutions for education.”
