“My personal experience and my professional research reveals–and as the POPIPV and other studies document–that the majority of domestic violence incidents officers respond to are minor incidents or incidents where it is difficult to separate the offender from the victim.
“The POPIPV documents that almost two of every three (62%) law enforcement IPV interventions are for ‘verbal arguments’ and one of every five (20.4%) are for incidents where it is difficult to determine who is the offender and who is the victim. Hence, the vast majority (82.4%) of IPV interventions can be problematic for responding officers.”
Richard L. Davis (pictured), MS and MA, of www.Familynonviolence.org recently sent me an excellent new article he penned–Exploring law enforcement’s response to “intimate partner violence” (www.PoliceOne.com, 2/19/09). I recommend the whole article, but below are some excerpts. Davis writes:
I recently read Police Officer Perceptions of Intimate Partner Violence: An Analysis of Observational Data (POPIPV) which explores, among other issues, four “problematic views’ of why law enforcement officers “often dislike, resist responding to, or are easily frustrated by intimate partner violence (IPV) calls…’
I suggest that anyone who has interactions with the criminal justice system and law enforcement concerning the issue of IPV should read this report, which appeared in the November 1, 2008 issue of the journal Violence and Victims. There is much that researchers, public policy makers, domestic violence interveners, the criminal justice system, and law enforcement officers in general can learn from it.
Researchers claim that the reason for officers” “reluctance or frustration’ in responding to IPV is their lack of understanding of the complexities of these incidents and their insensitivity for victims. I am not convinced that all researchers clearly understand the complex nature of IPV, nor the multifaceted “perceptions’ of victimization it presents to law enforcement. As the report suggests, some IPV victimization can be more subjective than objective…
My personal experience and my professional research reveals–and as the POPIPV and other studies document–that the majority of domestic violence incidents officers respond to are minor incidents or incidents where it is difficult to separate the offender from the victim.
The POPIPV documents that almost two of every three (62%) law enforcement IPV interventions are for “verbal arguments’ and one of every five (20.4%) are for incidents where it is difficult to determine who is the offender and who is the victim. Hence, the vast majority (82.4%) of IPV interventions can be problematic for responding officers.
Researchers often interpret only the raw data of officers responding to IPV incidents and report that officers do not make arrests in the majority of those they respond to. The POPIPV documents that in the vast majority of interventions, there is a great deal of difficulty establishing proper probable cause for an arrest.
Minor or isolated incidents or interventions that lack evidence-based data to prove who initiated the assault –initiation establishes who is “first’ to assault — can be problematic. It is difficult, but not improbable, under the law of common sense and statute law, to proclaim that you are acting in self-defense when you are the partner who initiated the assaultive behavior.
Mandatory or preferred arrest statutes are also problematic. A National Institute of Justice report documents that arrests are 60% less likely to result in conviction in states with preferred or mandatory arrest laws than in states with discretionary arrest laws.
Read Davis’ whole article here. To learn more about problems with mandatory arrest laws and the domestic violence system, click here.
Davis was one of the presenters at the historic “From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence” conference in Sacramento, CA. in February, 2008. To order DVDs of the conference, click here. To read more about the conference’s content, click here. Davis can be reached at rldavis@post.harvard.edu.