[ceejayoz]

"We hire people with strong stomachs and a strong sense of duty. Not everyone who sees this stuff is scarred for life."

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-...

> Two studies have found that at least 40 percent of police officer families experience domestic violence, in contrast to 10 percent of families in the general population. A third study of older and more experienced officers found a rate of 24 percent, indicating that domestic violence is two to four times more common among police families than American families in general.

[baumy]

Those studies have been thoroughly discredited. Not only do they qualify things like "shouting" and "loss of temper" as domestic violence (which of course do not meet the legal threshold for that term), they have never been able to be reproduced. When the same exact researchers attempted to reproduce, they got a wildly different rate of 24% using the exact same methodology. Other researchers using better methodology and appropriate definitions of "domestic violence" have found numbers generally between 7% and 11%.

The 40% study itself even says that the victims reported a 10% rate of physical domestic violence from their partner, but specifically does not indicate who the aggressor is - the officer or their spouse. The study is also 30+ years old at this point. [0]

More recent research from 2009, which imo has a far superior methodology and a larger sample size, says that "over 87 percent of officers reported never having engaged in physical domestic violence in their lifetime" [1]

Other studies [2] [3] report rates between about 2% and 11% for mixtures of one time and recurring domestic violence, which are in line with population averages.

[0] https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951003089863c

[1] http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/1862

[2] http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/virtual_disk_library/index.c...

[3] https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi...

[ceejayoz]

> More recent research from 2009, which imo has a far superior methodology and a larger sample size, says that "over 87 percent of officers reported never having engaged in physical domestic violence in their lifetime" [1]

I'm sorry, are we reading the same thing?

"Using a survey created from existing scales, 250 officers were contacted within several departments in Central Florida, of these, 90 officers responded."

Asking cops "do you do crimes" is an interesting methodology, for sure.

[baumy]

> Asking cops "do you do crimes" is an interesting methodology, for sure.

How do you think the population wide numbers are gathered?

The core point is that the 40% number is exaggerated BS, if for no other reason than it literally counts "shouting" and "loss of temper". There's no reliable evidence indicating the number for police officers is any different than the general population.

[ceejayoz]

> How do you think the population wide numbers are gathered?

Not merely by asking the perpetrators.

13% of active cops admitting in a survey to domestic violence certainly means the actual number is higher than that.

[nieve]

> More recent research from 2009, which imo has a far superior methodology and a larger sample size, says that "over 87 percent of officers reported never having engaged in physical domestic violence in their lifetime"

Which means 12-13% _admitted_ committing physical domestic violence, what has to be a significant undercount.