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

Abstract

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. 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. 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, agencies recently redoubled their efforts to prevent such crimes in a broad-based project called the Law Enforcement Families Partnership (LEFP). The LEFP not only pursues intervention strategies, but has taken what victim advocacy groups describe as the “bold move,” of systemically attempting to prevent domestic violence in officers’ families. 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. 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, these data include feedback on the training itself. The LEFP hopes that even these early results will significantly advance efforts to curb officer-involved domestic violence.