Is it valid to say 40% of American police officers perpetrate domestic violence?
After half an hour digging through empirical #research I think I can confidently say "no." Why? Because we have no real idea how much DV is perpetrated by cops. Because nobody can really study it with solid methods. Because (IMO, anyway) a lot of scholars are kind of scared of #cops .
One guy testified for Congress in 1991, and he gets cited a lot, but his #ResearchMethods were not perfect. Then the rate of good research on this went down for the next 30 years.
Lots of opinions, "perceptions of...", etc., but `` numbers? I'm currently not finding any I trust a whole lot. One lit review (2016) found estimates of #DomesticViolence rates from 5% to 40%. Another article just said "Probably about the same as the general public," after clearly misreading a couple of previous estimates.
Anyway, nobody knows how much domestic violence police commit, and it sort of feels like the police want it to stay that way.