Is it valid to say 40% of American police officers perpetrate domestic violence?
After half an hour digging through empirical #research I think I can confidently say "no." Why? Because we have no real idea how much DV is perpetrated by cops. Because nobody can really study it with solid methods. Because (IMO, anyway) a lot of scholars are kind of scared of #cops .
One guy testified for Congress in 1991, and he gets cited a lot, but his #ResearchMethods were not perfect. Then the rate of good research on this went down for the next 30 years.
Lots of opinions, "perceptions of...", etc., but `` numbers? I'm currently not finding any I trust a whole lot. One lit review (2016) found estimates of #DomesticViolence rates from 5% to 40%. Another article just said "Probably about the same as the general public," after clearly misreading a couple of previous estimates.
Anyway, nobody knows how much domestic violence police commit, and it sort of feels like the police want it to stay that way.
@guyjantic I would like to see what police domestic violence rates are. But I would also like to see what the domestic violence rates are for people who work in high stress jobs. Like fire fighters and ambulance crews. I would also like to know the DV rate of veterans who saw combat. And finally what the rates are for people who work at places like the DMV and post office. The rest you can clump together.
I also know that a lot of DV isn't classified as such by the victim. For example a slap in the face is just their normal happens once a week if he/she drank too much. Doesn't leave a mark and they are always sorry the next day. I read this from a telephone study done in certain parts of Europe. Where the person would say they are never abused but when you they were asked specific questions it turns out they were but didn't consider it.
@Weanerdog You've highlighted some of the issues I think of, too. I think the best comparison for police DV rates (to address the sometimes-unspoken question, "are they super high because they are cops?") is with other emergency workers, as well as other professions where the potential for violence is part of the job. And you've noted some of the problems that jump out immediately to social scientists, as well: reporting bias, self-perception bias, and (kind of importantly) gender bias--because recent population-based studies show that women assault their partners at least as much as the other way around (though they are also less likely to cause serious harm or death).
The facts that police groups are not seen as cooperative with researchers, and that police are believed by some researchers to be individually less likely to respond to DV surveys mean we can't even get to these questions.
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