Police and domestic violence

The other day I was Googling the name of a public information officer with the Dallas police department, a friendly, chipper man who used to provide me with press releases and quotes when I was on deadline as a reporter at the Dallas Observer. I had a question that I thought he might be able to answer, and though it had been a couple years since we'd talked, I was confident that he'd remember me.

Rather than finding his contact information, however, I stumbled upon an article about him that was published on a blog called Behind the Blue Wall, which chronicles (without commentary) instances of police officer perpetrated domestic violence in the news. The story linked to a Dallas Morning News article that said that the officer, Sergeant Gil Cerda, was issued a restraining order after he threatened to kill his wife and beat up her child. At first, Cerda's wife was hesitant to come forward. According to the article, "she didn't seek to file a police report or go to the department's internal affairs division because she feared that would ruin her husband's career or harm his reputation. She said she also feared his influence within the Police Department."

Sergeant Gil Cerda's violent behavior shocked me to the core. Here was a person who seemed to embody the ideal police public relations person--a democratic nice guy who didn't spew bullshit to the press. And yet, in his domestic life, he morphed into a violent, threatening character, the very instance of a corrupt law enforcement agent--someone who uses his publicly sanctioned role as a peacekeeper to terrorize his family or other people in his community. Gil Cerda's wife, like so many victims of police officer violence, felt she had no recourse. How could she go to the police? Her husband was one of them.

The Gil Cerda story is no singular affair. According to the National Center for Women and Policing, a project of the Feminist Majority Foundation, at least 40 percent of police officer families experience domestic violence. (The domestic violence rate in society at large is 10 percent.) Aside from the larger psychological questions about whether the stress of police work (or military work) leads to violence in the home, there are major practical problems when it comes to persecuting violent officers. According to a Women and Policing report, abused women and children have a difficult time escaping the violence because the officer knows the locations of women's shelters. (These addresses are typically shielded from the public.) Officers and their colleagues are also known to sweep violence under the rug. Rather than produce an official police report detailing a violent incident, the issue will be dealt with internally and the perpetrator will receive nothing more than small slap on the wrist.

The stories detailed on Behind the Blue Wall are as heartbreaking as they are manifold. They also speak to the larger trend of domestic violence in our society, perpetrated by officers and civilians alike. As the Women and Policing report notes, "a police department that has domestic violence offenders among its ranks will not effectively serve and protect victims in the community." -Naomi