Police resistance to a full-service commitment in domestic disputes comes
from three main sources: a) job-related beliefs, values, and attitudes of
police officers; b) bureaucratic-managerial resistances within the force; c) general
societal beliefs, values, and attitudes. In establishing a new training program
for police officers in domestic conflict management, special attention must
be paid to changing (a) and (b) and at least making officers aware of (c).
General
Job-related Resistances
Probably the most difficult officer to “reach”
within a conflict management program is the traditional, authoritarian officer
who has done his job a certain way for a number of years and whose personal experience
has forged a focus on “how to do police work” that is fixed as if it
were set in concrete. To this officer, family dispute calls are viewed extremely
negatively, as a type of “no-win” situation where any response short
of arrest or cooling down the situation and giving a warning is a waste of time
and not police work. This officer defines his job through what he is doing rather
than through the goal or objective of his work. Hence, sitting in a private home
interviewing, mediating, or making a referral to a social agency is considered
“social work,” not police work, which is seen as being in the cruiser,
on patrol, waiting to respond to a crime call. This is the “on the surface”
response of the traditional police officer. Just below the surface are a variety
of reasons why such an officer resists changes in his approach to handling family
dispute calls:
1) The calls do not fall under the general area
of Street policing. The officer is literally on “someone else’s turf”
where he feels a little uneasy. Rights of entry can present potential legal problems;
even when this is not an issue, being in someone else’s home subtly shifts
the power balance from the officer to the homeowner, an uncomfortable shift for
the traditional officer who is used to dealing from a position of power
2)
Such calls often involve emotionally upset people, which many officers find discomfiting
and somewhat embarrassing, especially when personal emotional material is used
as a weapon in a verbal dispute between intimates.
3) In many
cases, the dispute strikes the officer, either consciously or not, as being similar
to a personal dispute he may have had or be having with his own spouse. To the
extent that the similarity is not conscious, it can create problems for the officer
both in his inability to maintain neutrality in the present dispute and in the
aggravation of his own domestic problem.
4) Untrained officers
have no feelings of control in family disputes. Their only perceived control in
the situation is the use of authority and toughness, but this often backfires,
leading to violence that is touched off by the officer’s own behavior (Bard,
1971). In other words, the rules that work for the officer in the street often
backfire in a family dispute, and, if untrained, the officer has not yet learned
a new set of workable rules or alternative sources of control in a situation.
5)
Untrained officers have no feelings of accomplishment in family disputes. Improperly
handled disputes lead to high recidivism rates. When police are called back to
the same address time after time, a feeling of futility sets in. While some of
these families may be locked into a chronic fight pattern, many others can be
dealt with more successfully by trained police. In addition, many departments
try to change policy on family dispute handling through training alone, without
an accompanying change in the departmental reward system, so that correct application
by the officer of the proper intervention procedures goes unrecognized and unrewarded.
Police department reward criteria continue to support the traditional police role.
The end result may be that training effects are lost.
6) Effective
family dispute intervention requires some interpersonal sensitivity and verbal
skills, both of which traditional police avoid. Yet no one could argue that a
police officer’s general performance on the job would not improve through
the acquisition of either skill.
7) Police feel that laying
of charges in a family assault is futile because the injured party (usually the
woman) will not carry through on the charges after the crisis has passed. Yet
alternative means of clearing the call are, by some twist of logic, similarly
resisted. Police “gripes” about the lack of achievement they feel handling
domestic disputes have some basis in departmental policies, rewards, etc.; yet
these gripes are often not heard about similarly unrewarding parts of the more
traditional police role, leading one to infer that they are in part a resistance
to role change per se.
8) Probably no other aspect of police
work straddles the tightrope between police law enforcement responses (if an assault
is occurring police are expected to act with dispatch, power and authority) and
order maintenance (in a delicate emotional crisis police are expected to be wise,
good at communicating, and capable of effecting a resolution). To an extent, these
two responses are somewhat antagonistic and incompatible. Consequently, a police
officer answering a family dispute call is put in a sort of “double bind”
situation: He can make a mistake by going too far in either direction (if too
tough, he can trigger violence; if too soft, he can fail to contain it). Often
police officers enter a family dispute situation without knowing which response
will be required of them. This tightrope situation contributes; greatly to the
tension the officer feels in such situations. The training procedures described
below attempt to remedy this dilemma by teaching police how to maximize their
information about a dispute in progress prior to entry (Dutton, 1977).
The
net effect of the points above is to create in the untrained officer a feeling
of anxiety, lack of control, unease, and futility in handling family dispute calls.
Each and every training session must deal openly with all of these resistances,
as well as with any others that officers volunteer in an “open forum”
type of atmosphere. Failure to do so simply leads to officers’ keeping their
negative feelings to themselves but I passively resisting the skills, insights,
and perspectives offered in the training workshop.
- Stuart, Richard B., Violent Behavior: Social Learning Approaches to Prediction, Management,
and Treatment, Brunner/Mazel Publishers: New York, 1981.
Effective Intervention in Domestic Violence &
Child Maltreatment Cases: Guidelines for Policy and Practice
- Schechter, S. and Edleson, J. L. (1999). Effective Intervention in Domestic Violence &
Child Maltreatment Cases: Guidelines for Policy and Practice. The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. The article above contains foundational information. Articles below contain optional updates.
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Personal
Reflection Exercise #2
The preceding section contained information
about police resistance with family dispute calls. Write three case study examples
regarding how you might use the content of this section in your practice.
QUESTION
8 What is a “double-bind” situation a police officer answering
a family domestic call faces? Record the letter of the correct answer the CEU Answer
Booklet.
QUESTION
9 What are three main sources that police resist to a full-service commitment in domestic disputes? Record the letter of the correct answer the CEU Answer
Booklet.
force; c) general
societal beliefs, values, and attitudes. In establishing a new training program
for police officers in domestic conflict management, special attention must
be paid to changing (a) and (b) and at least making officers aware of (c).
