RADAR ALERT: Another DV Myth: DV Situations and Danger To Police

Last week the mayor of Milwaukee was injured while intervening between a drunk man and his daughter's grandmother.¹

ABC's Milwaukee affiliate, WISN, followed up with a story that asserted, "domestic violence situations are, by far, the number one reason that police officers are wounded on duty," and quoting "domestic violence experts" to back up this bit of received wisdom.²

There's just one problem with this claim – researchers who studied this very question³ found it wasn't true. They found that domestic disturbance ranked fourth in the ratio of assaults to calls or service, but only fifth in the ratio of injuries to calls for service. In other words, he rate of injury from domestic disturbance calls was lower than the rate from four other types of calls.