The V.A.L.O.R. Project

Violence Against Law Officer Research
Supporting Law Enforcement Officers
Across the Nation
 

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TAKE THE V.A.L.O.R. SURVEY

 
CORRECTIONS OFFICERS TAKE THIS SURVEY:
 

 ARE POLICE OFFICERS SUPPOSED TO ACCEPT PUNCHES, KICKS, THREATS, AND RESISTANCE AS PART OF THEIR JOB?

 
My Hypothesis: Police officers who are victims of crime as defined by statute are routinely denied the rights afforded to other crime victims. As a result of this wholesale denial of their rights police officers suffer a handicap in being empathetic to civilian crime victims; have pathologies like other repeat crime victims; and are at risk of acting out in ways that constitute misconduct or in self destructive ways including substance abuse and suicide. 
 
 
 
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Article:
 

Cops: The Silent Victims

by Dr. Joel F. Shults

I was surprised to find out just how malicious and deviant I was because of this badge I wear.  While doing some Internet research on domestic violence by police officers I found several websites like http://www.life-span.org/policedv_victims.htm that outline why my fellow peace officers are such brutal Neanderthals.  Among the skills I am reputed to have learned along my career path are being “deceptive and manipulative,” the ability to “blame others for his use of force”, and to “inflict pain and leave no marks or bruises.”  During “Spy Week” at the academy I also presumably learned how to use a police scanner to listen in on cell phone conversations, attach tracking devices to cars, and am well practiced in harassment, planting evidence, and making false arrests. In league with the likes of Darth Vader, I also have the gift of “The Voice” which I can use to “humiliate loved ones.”

I unearthed this web-based sludge pile while looking for studies on violence against police officers. Go to the internet and search “police violence”. The slanderous misinformation and hate-mongering is stunning. We have a good and growing data base about deadly force and murders of police officers but precious little information about other victimization and anti-police violence.  In a quest for helpful study of this issue I have created the Violence Against Law Officer Research (VALOR) Center.

The purpose of VALOR is to explore issues related to the integrity of officers’ safety regarding the social norming of violence against police. Attitudes of acceptance of assaults on officers can result in the lack of prosecution as well as the lack of support for peace officers in general.

Anecdotal evidence of the acceptability of violence against police officers is likely found in conversations among colleagues. Some officers think little of facing a resistive subject and taking a shove or kick as part of their workday. Prosecutors often think that short of a gunshot wound police officers should expect and accept assaults as normal just like boxers and hockey players do. Police officers are sued every day, but officers seldom use their right to file suit for violations of their rights by suspects. Slander, threats, resistance, and aggression have somehow become so accepted as part of the daily toil for officers that at the end of the day when they get home and their family asks “Anything interesting happen today?” that the officer may not even think to mention the punch they took from the drunk they arrested.

Only when studying victims of crime did it occur to me that police are one of the most victimized groups on the continent. Not only do police officers suffer more physical attacks, verbal threats, and harassment than other individuals, officers must also investigate their own victimization, are accused of precipitating the attacks against them, become suspects if they allege an assault against themselves, and are often ignored when it comes to victims’ rights and services.

As I remember some of my own experiences the truth of living life as an un-served crime victim is evident. Many years ago a fleeing felony suspect rammed my patrol car while I was standing outside of it ordering the suspect driver to stop. After the perpetrator crashed into my door as I scrambled to get into the car he continued fleeing, crushed the door against my leg, and subsequently crashed into several other cars until he hit a gas main and utility pole after a wild pursuit through the city. The driver was not prosecuted after he promised to join the military.

In another jurisdiction I was confronted by an intoxicated machete-wielding male who escaped getting shot by me and assisting officers only by the benevolence of a supervisor who was willing to use a nightstick and pepper spray to subdue him.  Apparently because the offender was too drunk to know what he was doing and didn’t actually hurt anybody, the prosecutor thought a night in detox was sufficient for punishment. This was the same prosecutor who got no jail time and a misdemeanor plea for a 19 year old martial arts student who knocked me unconscious on a traffic stop and left me bleeding on the pavement as he fled into the woods.

Recently, a fellow officer who was forced to shoot a resistive burglar was not notified of the sentencing hearing of the suspect until a chance conversation prompted a demand that she have a voice in the proceeding. The offender got no jail time.

In order to begin a study of police officers as crime victims I created a survey of officer experiences and opinions on the matter. Thus far the survey shows some interesting trends. Over 67% of respondents had five or more years of armed patrol experience, representing both genders and all levels of jurisdiction. When these officers were asked if they thought taking an assault was part of their job, 7% said yes. They estimate that 14% their supervisors thought getting assaulted was part of the line officers’ job, but underestimated their peers’ views by saying only 3% of their coworkers felt the same way. Interestingly about the same percentage (40%) of officers say that their prosecutors take assaults on officers very seriously as those officers who say their prosecutors think getting assaulted is part of the job. More than half of those surveyed state that they have been assaulted but didn’t consider themselves a crime victim, and fewer than 12% have ever been offered victim’s rights services. Slightly more than 15% of officers confessed to failing to report being a victim for fear of negative peer pressure and about 10% have decided that pursuing charges against an offender who assaulted them was not worth the effort.

The survey verifies that policing is dangerous work on duty and off. Six out of ten officers report having encounters in which they had to make the decision to use deadly force. While actually using deadly force is relatively rare, the majority of officers during their careers had been in a position where using deadly force would have been legally and morally justifiable but they chose not to use it. Only 7% of officers report having not been threatened within the past year.  Nearly 90% have been threatened with a lawsuit, over 75% have had their job threatened by an offender, and nearly 80% of officers have been threatened with assault if seen by the offender when the officer is out of uniform and off-duty. Actual threats received during off duty hours were reported by 17% of officers responding to the survey. Over 10% reported being a victim of vandalism to personal property from offenders seeking revenge within the past year and almost 30% experienced personal property damage by offenders at least once in their career. An astounding 82% of officers report suffering painful injuries without reporting it or seeking medical care sometime in their career. About 14% report seriously considering getting out of police work because of the danger.

Only 3% of those surveyed report being injured by a deadly weapon in the past year but 10% have been injured by an offender’s weapon over a career. Threats with a deadly weapon occurred to 25% of officers in the last year while nearly 50% of respondents reported being victimized by threats with weapons during the course of their career. Almost one in four officers reports making a hospital visit because of an injury caused by an offender in the past year and over 50% have sought treatment in their career with 20% report losing time off work because of an injury caused by an offender.

Fewer than 20% of officers in the survey report that offenses against police are aggressively prosecuted. A significant 60% of respondents believed that assaults on officers were among the first charges dropped in plea bargaining, with half of officers reporting that felony cases were prosecuted as misdemeanors. Further, nearly a quarter of officers were investigated for wrongdoing in cases where they believed they were the victim. Nearly half of the officers were not consulted on plea outcomes on cases where they were the victim of assault or resisting arrest.

Despite what many say is the assumption of risk that police officers accept, the laws of every state require citizens to submit to an arrest; slander is an actionable civil tort; and police officers theoretically are given special protections by laws that have enhanced punishments when an officer is victimized. Must we have a police funeral in order to evoke the outrage that any other citizen would voice if they suffered the same indignities and assaults?

The effect of violence against police officers is corrosive to the social order. How assertive are police officers going to be if chiefs, sheriffs, and prosecutors give tacit permission for offenders to get a free kick or punch on any street contact or in our jails? How empathetic with victims can officers be when the officer is denied those basic victim rights and services themselves? What price is paid by police departments that lose officers to resignation, premature retirement, injury, excessive force claims, or stress-related maladies when that department views violence against their front line as an acceptable working condition? What price is paid by the individual officer when the guardians of justice are not protected within the system they serve? Television psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw is known for stating the principle that individuals teach others how to treat them by what behavior they accept from them. How are we teaching our public to treat us?

 






Read this reprint from my good friend Doug with

 
PoliceOne Senior Editor Doug Wyllie Editor's Corner
with PoliceOne Senior Editor Doug Wyllie

IACP Digest: Violence against police officers and the V.A.L.O.R. Project

“The majority of police officers will make a deadly force decision but only get services for the traumatic event if they actually pull the trigger,” said Dr. Joel Shults, a former college professor who presently is the Chief of Police for Adams State College in Colorado.

Shults, who is also a PoliceOne Contributor, explained his recent research on police officers as crime victims during the IACP Confernece in Denver last month. Shults’ work with the Violence Against Law Officers Research (V.A.L.O.R.) Project began when he was listening to characteristics of domestic violence victims: repeated voluntary exposure to violence, reluctance to report, refusal to consider themselves a victim, poor access to victim services, and lack of communication with prosecutors and investigators. Recognizing that this sounded similar to police officers dealing with being assaulted, the first V.A.L.O.R. survey questioned attitudes and experiences of police officers regarding victimization on the job.

Shults’ Web site says, “Go to the Internet and search the term ‘police violence.’ The slanderous misinformation and hate-mongering is stunning. We have a good and growing data base about deadly force and murders of police officers but precious little information about other victimization and anti-police violence. In a quest for helpful study of this issue created the Violence Against Law Officer Research (VALOR) Center.”

It’s probable that the attendees to Shults’ talk were unsurprised to learn that nearly every officer who responded to the survey said that being punched or shoved is not acceptable. Equally unremarkable (although I’m remarking on it here) is that some 15 percent believe that their supervisors think being assaulted is ‘part of the job’ — nearly half of those surveyed say that they believe prosecutors think this to be true. These are not exactly shocking revelations. However, here are some more statistics from the V.A.L.O.R. Project survey for you to consider:

• Nearly nine in ten officers reported being threatened with retaliation on duty for doing their job — about one fifth of officers reported being threatened off duty
• Nearly one in five officers have had personal property vandalized by offenders
• Nearly half of those surveyed said they’d been assaulted but had not considered themselves a crime victim
• More than one in ten officers don’t report being assaulted because they know there will be no prosecution
• Nearly two thirds of officers say they’ve seen charges related to assaulting an officer being the first dropped in plea bargaining
• Nearly half report seeing felony assault or resisting cases tried as misdemeanors — half say that case dispositions were made without their knowledge or input
• Three out of four officers have suffered physical pain and injury without seeking medical treatment
• Four out of five report that they were not treated with the same care as a civilian assault victim
• Fifteen percent reported they felt victimized but did not report the crime for fear of criticism from peers

Speaking with Shults during the PoliceOne Ten Year Anniversary Party, it became immediately clear to me that if we’d met under entirely different circumstances (say, for example, at a party), we’d be fast friends. I like to consider myself a thinking man, and Shults’ demeanor and wisdom are appealing in a way I can best describe thusly: “He’s a thinking man’s man.”

“Officers who are victims of crime are routinely denied the rights afforded to other crime victims,” Shults told me. “It is no wonder that fifteen percent of officers every year consider leaving law enforcement due to the dangers and lack of the criminal justice system’s response related to assaults.”

Shults pointed out that many of the ways assaulted officers are treated are in violation of state laws regarding victim’s rights. Knowing that most of his audience had been victims of assault during their careers, he asked how many had been given victim rights information, offered a victim advocate, had been given restitution, and had been consulted on the defendant’s charges, sentence, or release. Few in the audience had.

“How can we expect officers to have empathy with a victim when they never get the very services they offer to others?” Shults asked. “How many use of force excesses are at the hands of officers who feel that their actions at the time of an arrest are the only punishment this offender will ever get?”

To emphasize the disparity between civilian victims and police victims, Shults pointed out that officers almost always investigate their own case.

“Consider the absurdity of handing a notepad, camera, and witness statement forms to a civilian assault victim and asking them to do their own investigation,” Shults said. “That’s something we ask police officers to do all the time, even while knowing that many of those cases will result in complaints or lawsuits.”

Having an uninvolved officer investigate assaults on fellow police officers was one of several policy recommendations from Chief Shults. Other policy recommendations included making sure that all victim rights laws were applied to officers, and that the culture of acceptance of violence against officers be changed by educating officers, supervisors, prosecutors, judges, and potential jurors. Other recommendations were:  

• Let officers know they should report when they are a crime victim — including being resisted or assaulted on duty — or victimized off duty as a result of their job
• Make sure any and all victim’s right afforded to a civilian is also afforded to the officer who is assaulted
• Police leadership should be sure that thier officers understand their right to sue for damages
• Officers shouldn’t have to be shot to be visited by police command staff after being injured

The purpose of V.A.L.O.R. is to explore issues related to the integrity of officers’ safety regarding the social ‘norming’ of violence against police. Attitudes of acceptance of assaults on officers can result in the lack of prosecution as well as the lack of support for peace officers in general.

“By most estimates there are about three quarters of a million police officers in America,” Shults told me. “Three quarters of them report being assaulted every year. That’s arguably one of the most pervasive victim classes in the country. Maybe it’s about time to provide them with the same rights as others.”















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