Domestic violence a major problem with cops

Popular Resistance - In families of police officers, domestic violence is two-to-four times more likely than in the general population — from stalking and harassment to sexual assault and even homicide. As the National Center for Women and Policing notes, two studies have found that at least 40% of police officer families experience domestic violence, in contrast to 10% of families in the general population.

A 2013 Bowling Green State University study, through news searches, tallied 324 cases of reported officer domestic violence. It is likely that this number is a gross underestimate, because as the National Center for Women and Policing has detailed, officers frequently cover for each other.

“A big part of police culture is the code of silence,” Diane Wetendorf, author of Police Domestic Violence: Handbook for Victims, told the San Francisco Chronicle.  “The prosecutors depend on police for their cases, the police depend on each other — it’s a very insulated system,”

A September analysis on officer domestic violence by theAtlantic explains how cases come to be underreported. It’s not just that women are more intimidated to report domestic violence because their attackers are officers and worry that nobody will believe them; it’s that officers adjudicate the entire process on an informal level.

“Cops ‘typically handle cases of police family violence informally, often without an official report, investigation, or even check of the victim’s safety,’” the Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf writes, quoting a study from the National Center for Women and Policing. “‘Even officers who are found guilty of domestic violence are unlikely to be fired, arrested or referred for prosecution.’”