Protecting Lives, Careers, and Public Confidence: Florida's Efforts to Prevent Officer‐involved Domestic Violence

Abstract

Florida's innovative Law Enforcement Families Partnership (LEFP) was created to reduce and prevent officer-involved domestic violence in the state. Administered by the Institute for Family Violence Studies at Florida State University and supported by the criminal justice and victim's advocacy communities, the LEFP is the first statewide project of its kind. It includes several components, the cornerstone of which is an online curriculum that teaches officers about the dynamics and consequences of domestic violence perpetrated by officers. This article describes the project and early data from the surveys attached to the curriculum.In October of 2009, a police lieutenant in Florida murdered the mother of one of his children and then fatally turned the gun on himself. 1 The tragedy brought into dramatic focus a phenomenon that had gained prominent attention a decade earlier: officer-involved domestic violence. In 1999, the International Association of Chiefs of Police acknowledged that "the profession of law enforcement is not immune from members committing domestic violence," and that it occurs at least as frequently in officers' families as it does in the general population. 2 Since that pronouncement, many states across the United States have made efforts to address officer-involved domestic violence. Their progress, however, has been uneven. In Florida, where over 45,000 law enforcement and 35,000 correctional and probation officers are employed, 3 agencies recently redoubled their efforts to prevent such crimes in a broad-based project called the Law Enforcement Families Partnership (LEFP). 4 The LEFP not only pursues intervention strategies, but has taken what victim advocacy groups describe as the "bold move" of systematically attempting to prevent domestic violence in officers' families. 5 This article first offers an overview of the scourge of domestic violence which forms the backdrop of the LEFP. The article then tracks the inception of the LEFP and focuses on one of its core components: a new web-based prevention curriculum. 6 In addition, the article reports the result of the first-quarter research data from the pre-and post-tests of the online curriculum study. Besides providing preliminary information on officers' knowledge and attitudes, the data includes feedback on the training itself. The LEFP hopes that even these early results will significantly advance efforts to curb officerinvolved domestic violence.

Fox in the Henhouse

“…OIDV victims are distinguished from other domestic violence victims because the abuser is among those expected to enforce domestic violence statutes; a “fox in the henhouse” problem described by Ammons (2005) in her essay on the topic and utilized in our title phrase to underscore the unique vulnerabilities of OIDV victims who have “nowhere to go, no way to escape, and very few people to protect them” (p. 30). The problem defies easy solutions, but Florida’s innovative Law Enforcement Families Partnership (LEFP) offers practical strategies to address some of the problems encountered by OIDV victims in their Model Policy on Officer-Involved Domestic Violence (2010; Oehme & Martin, 2011; Oehme et al, 2011). The policy advocates prevention through collaboration between police agencies and domestic violence advocacy organizations.…”

Police emergency: career survivability navigating trauma, the impacts of COVID-19 and mental illness for police

“…Concern has been raised related to family and domestic violence (FDV) risk factors, such as PTSD and alcohol (mis)use perpetrated by police officers. A significant example includes a matter in Florida whereby a police officer was accused of beating, choking, assaulting and subsequently killing their intimate partner due to suffering psychologically from PTSD (Oehme et al , 2011). In addition to this, it is important to note that police skills are designed to establish control physically and psychologically in chaotic and dangerous situations and over people (Klein and Klein, 2000).…”