Abstract
Police work is rife with the potential for physical harm, and domestic assault calls are one source of assaults on officers. Inability to accurately predict what circumstances might lead to an attack is one cause of officer cynicism and paranoia. Having the ability to identify which suspects pose the greatest threat of assault would allow officers to take appropriate protective measures. Using data collected from 1,951 domestic assault calls across three cities, the present study compared characteristics and behaviors of the batterers with whether or not the batterers physically assaulted the responding officers. Findings revealed five significant batterer characteristics (employment status, shared residence with abuse victim, alcohol consumption, property damage, and hostile demeanor toward officers) that successfully predicted officer assaults. These risk factors may be incorporated into police safety training in the response to family violence calls.
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Notes
Data obtained from Sherman, L. W. and Berk, R. A., Specific Deterrent Effects of Arrest for Domestic Assault: Minneapolis, 1981–1982: Sherman, L. W., Schmidt, J. D., Rogan, D. P., Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment, 1987–1989: Pate, A., Hamilton, E. E., and Sampson, A., Spouse Abuse Replication Project in Metro-Dade County, Florida 1987–1989: computer file datasets; Ann Arbor, Michigan: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2001.
While police lore frequently provides examples of incidents where it was the abuse victim at the domestic violence call who assaulted the officers, the data here suggests that this is a truly rare event. An attack on officers by a victim occurred in less than one in a thousand domestic violence calls recorded in these three datasets.
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Johnson, R.R. Predicting Officer Physical Assaults at Domestic Assault Calls. J Fam Viol 26, 163–169 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-010-9346-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-010-9346-0