How to Combat Officer-Involved Domestic Violence -Mark Wynn
And yet there are many that are policing without it.
I understand that. Let me just say, you cannot police in an open society and — if you lose the public trust, you’re in big trouble. In order for us to win the public trust, we have to tell society that we’re going to hold our own accountable, and this is the way to do it, by investigating and arresting and prosecuting officers that commit domestic violence in their own families.
…… If an officer learns about an allegation of domestic violence involving a fellow officer and does not report it or take action, what should the response by his superiors be, or her superiors?
It’s pretty simple for me. Whenever you are aware of a crime and you don’t hold someone accountable, then you’re colluding with a criminal. Is that what we want in the ranks of law enforcement? Do we want our officers to collude with a criminal? The answer is obviously no.
A way to make sure that doesn’t happen is that we not only say but we promote zero tolerance in the ranks of law enforcement around domestic violence. Because we’ve seen this play before, where police departments and sheriffs’ departments around the country have tolerated domestic violence, and what it got was the death of the spouse of an officer.
We can’t tolerate that anymore. The mystery’s over. We already know. The studies are over. We know what these offenders will do. We know what they’re capable of, because domestic violence defenders not only abuse their family members nationwide, they kill police officers. Four people that I knew, friends, were killed by domestic violence offenders in my city alone.
The very first police officer killed on my police department in 1875 was killed responding to a domestic violence call. One hundred and five years later, I was policing the same streets as that officer was killed on, so when I hear someone say we should tolerate levels of domestic violence, I say you must be out of your mind, because these offenders are not only dangerous to their families, they’re dangerous to police officers. …