Prospectus; Police Perspectives while Attending a Domestic Disturbance Call

Problem Statement

When police arrive on the scene of a domestic disturbance call, it is often difficult to properly identify who the abuser is and who the victim is and thus predict danger unless a standardized tool is used by officers (Messing, Campbell, Wilson, Brown, & Patchell, 2015).    These situations can be extremely volatile and officer deaths occurs 14.1% of the time on domestic disturbance calls across 17 states according to Blair, Fowler, Betz, and Baumgardner (2016).  Talking with the parties involved and making good decisions about safety planning (Murray, Horton,  Johnson,  Notestine, Garr, Pow, Flasch, & Doom, 2015), deciding who to arrest if an arrest is made, and knowing how to further protect and serve by making good recommendations for both parties is critical, yet police officers often mishandle these scenes even not filing paperwork that is required by their departments (Westbrook, 2015).  Assumptions about guilt are often based on interview techniques that do not do an accurate job of assessing the situations (Novisky, & Peralta, 2014).  Many believe that this occurs in large part due to manipulative tactics of the alleged abuser on the scene who works hard to gain allies and change the perception of those in authority, convincing officers that he or she is the true victim (Bancroft, 2002) but it also might have to do with social identity theory (Tajfel, 1974) in which officers are aligning themselves with one party or another during these adversarial encounters.  The experiences of these officers as they negotiate these tactics have never been recorded or noted from an on-scene perspective. 

Purpose Statement

The purpose of this qualitative study is to examine the lived experiences of officers that interview and interact with alleged perpetrators during domestic disturbance calls while using The Brief Spousal Assault Form for the Evaluation of Risk. Storey, Kropp, Hart, Belfrage, and Strand (2014) have quantitatively studied the use of this tool which is designed to alleviate the confusion and accurately predict danger/identify abusers on these calls.  This instrument is an officer-friendly version of The Spousal Assault Risk Assessment which is currently the gold standard used to identify abusive persons (Llor-Esteban, Garcia-Jimenez, Ruiz-Hernandez, & Godoy-Fernandez, 2016).

Another goal of this study is to explore the non-standardized aspects of the response of officers on domestic disturbance calls. These include intuitions and observations of possible characteristics of alleged perpetrators. Using social identity theory to evaluate if alignment is occurring is also relevant.  The sum and total of all of this will include identifiable patterns of behavior and characteristics of alleged perpetrators on domestic disturbance calls.  This identification has been made in the prison setting but never on the scene of a domestic disturbance call by police officers (Loinaz, 2014).  Officers are the first responders who have the potential to prevent escalation in these cases through their use of interview techniques/management strategies which can lead to better overall safety for officers, victims, and their families. 

Background of the Study

Li, Levick, Eichman, and Chang (2015) state that Intimate Partner Violence which is prevalent during domestic disturbance calls, is problematic for officers and for victims and, the literature illustrates that better training and understanding is needed by law enforcement. In other fields, the importance of handling of these interactions well with domestic violence situations has been found to be crucial to the positive outcome for all parties involved (Turner, Hester, Broad, Szilassy, Feder, Drinkwater, Firth, & Stanley, 2015).   It is thought that poor interactions with officers and other court officials then lead to victims not being treated properly and receiving the help they need (Keeling, Van Wormer, & Taylor, 2015).    In one study for example it was found that veterans who commit domestic violence reportedly escape accountability for considerable crimes against their families (Markowitz, & Watson, 2015).  Accountability works for many other crimes by disallowing secrecy according to Sullivan and Sheehan (2016), and it is the same concept for domestic violence. Before this can occur though, officers first must be able to identify and describe their own feelings, concerns, themes that emerge, and observable characteristics of perpetrators during these interactions. Social identity theory which states that people often align themselves with a certain “ingroup” or “outgroup” and that this influences their decisions and behavior, might also be relevant (Tajfel, 1974).  To date, there has been no attempt to study this with police officers, only to blame them for the negative outcomes in these cases.  This does not do any good for anyone.  Officers are at risk, abusers are getting away with the crime, and victims and their families continue to experience many well-documented issues because of this (Vu, Jouriles, Mc Donald, & Rosenfield, 2016).  Use of standardized tools has been found to be helpful quantitatively as far as identification of perpetrators in these cases (Petersson, Strand, & Selenius, 2016) but officers are still left to make the decisions on these cases alone so choosing appropriate next steps for all involved is what either leads to safety and peace, or further escalation (Johnson, & Dai, 2016).  Their good judgement therefore is imperative and this is something that currently is badly needed (Eterno, Verma, & Silverman, 2014).

Significance

The study findings will potentially provide information about how police officers’ experiences may be a result of their own trauma, duress, and lack of training with domestic violence. The existing literature on domestic violence and police involvement has mostly focused on the perceptions of alleged victims (Hahn, & Scanlon, 2015). Additionally, the study will be presented through the lens of police officers’ experiences regarding information that gets gathered from alleged abusers while offices work on scene during a domestic disturbance call. The question of what officers are trained and required to do in New Hampshire is a focal point of interest since there is such variation in protocol with domestic disturbances (Ariza, Robinson, & Myhill, 2016). This study explores if the use of a standardized tool such as The Brief Spousal Assault Form for the Evaluation of Risk is helpful in easing the process and experience overall for officers working on these calls. Better working knowledge is needed in this area for police officers and more generally, law enforcement needs a learning opportunity for expressing shared experiences concerning their work on domestic disturbances (Blair, Fowler, Betz, & Baumgardner, 2016). 

Framework

This qualitative study works within the theoretical framework of Henri Tajfel’s Social Identity theory (1974) which examines the effects of categorizing people into in-groups or out-groups and the perceptions, attitudes, and behavior that result from doing so.  The experiments that confirmed this theory are still being replicated and it has been found that if people do not have preconceptions about categorizing, they do better at more accurately assessing (Comeille, Klein, Lambert, & Judd, 2002).  Interviews, in which officers are sharing their experiences and feelings about interactions in a situation which is by nature adversarial, such as working with people on a domestic disturbance call, align well with this theoretical framework. 

There is plenty of research interest and literature concerning the feelings of domestic violence victims in this area (Keeling, Van Wormer, & Taylor, 2015).  While concerns about social identification of officers with domestic violence perpetrators is well-documented (Li, Levick, Eichman, & Chang, 2015), researchers are just beginning to look at the reasons for this judgement and subsequent behavior of officers on domestic disturbance calls (Eterno, Verma, & Silverman, 2014). The why of most departments not having a set standard protocol for these cases or not adhering to some of the current standards have has been observed/reported but not studied (Cerulli, Edwardsen, Hall, Chan, & Conner, 2015).  What is currently talked about in the research is the maltreatment of victims at the hands of law enforcement, but no one has committed to finding out how officers feel and what can be done to help them better service victims and their families. Through helping officers build an awareness of the bias of identifying with one social “in-group” while punishing or ostracizing the other “out-group” one might help officers to achieve better safety for all.  When officers identify with the group that is more likely to be armed and dangerous because socially this feels more comfortable, he or she places everyone on scene at risk for injury or even death.

Research Questions

The prominent qualitative research questions (RQs) are: 

RQ1-Qualitative: What are the perceptions of law enforcement officers who are answering domestic disturbance calls?

RQ2-Qualitative: What are some subtle cues (i.e. nonverbal behaviors and responses) that law enforcement officers feel parties exhibit in response to law enforcement intervention that cannot be documented?

RQ3-Qualitative:  Which of these subtle cues (i.e. nonverbal behaviors and responses) determine which party law enforcement identifies with during the domestic disturbance call?  

Nature of Study

A purposive sample will be used for this study because police officers who get interviewed and the work they do fits a particular purpose or description. The intention is to use a fairly homogeneous group to help the participants feel at ease so as to minimize variation. Using only law enforcement officers as participants is reasonable.  According to Stacker (2016), one technique is to “leave the study open and proceed until no critical new information is obtained” thus obtaining saturation. Every effort will be made to conduct interviews to achieve this end where distinguishable patterns have been found.  

A primary goal of this study will be to examine human behavior within a psychological framework. Phenomenology methods may be inclusive of the group and individual observations, description, and experiences of the law enforcement officers who will be interviewed. Often in qualitative research the question asked in the beginning of a study is not answered in whole or part.  These studies will likely yield further questions. Qualitative research is very appropriate and often used in working with victims as words are needed to describe the things they have endured (Hahn, & Scanlon, 2015).   The descriptive words are essential to this type of research. There is no way to quantify some of their experiences with numbers.  This study will endeavor to show the complete or whole picture of a phenomenon or research interest which is the human behavior of law enforcement officers as they respond to, make judgements about, and make assessments of domestic disturbance calls.

Possible Types and Sources of Data

1.      Problem statements written at four key points during a doctoral student’s career:  The premise, the prospectus, the proposal, and the dissertation. 

2.      Ratings of problem statements by an expert panel of doctoral faculty.

3.      Interviews via voicemail by participating police officers concerning their experiences on domestic disturbance calls in New Hampshire.

4.      The work of Neuman (2006) concerning methods for hand coding qualitative research.

5.      Current journal articles concerning research that features the work of law enforcement and other professionals who work with domestic violence victims, abusers, and their families.

6.      Handbooks and Guidebooks that explain the administration of standardized assessment tools which are predictive in nature and can be used by police on a domestic disturbance call.

Possible Analytical Strategies

Data Analysis Procedures after completion of the study group will revolve around the interviews recorded via voice mail on a private phone line. Transcripts and supplemented notes will be used as a basis for analysis coding to organize raw data. The basics for this coding will go as follows:  Data will be collected via phone interviews.  These interviews will then be transcribed by the researcher.  The transcribed interviews will be broken into chunks of information and in each chunk and using the research questions guides, these chunks of data will be arranged into groups of words of varying sizes that share common phrases, sentences, or whole paragraphs (Neuman, 2006).  Once this is done, themes and categories will start to emerge for the researcher.  At about twenty interviews, saturation will generally be reached meaning that there will be so much repeated and similar data, that one will know that enough data has been collected.

The researcher will transcribe the recording and delete it to ensure confidentiality.  The data will be analyzed as stated above; using the Neuman method which identifies themes and terms, then, categories based on those themes, and lastly find examples in the interview transcripts. The researcher will then move back and forth amongst the data collected, using a constant comparative method, and continually refining categories and their interconnections while collecting additional data per Martha Stacker (2016), a researcher who recently conducted a similar study with forensic interviewers of child abuse victims.  This first pass is called “open coding” in which the initial themes will be organized into categories by the researcher. Labels or “codes” are assigned to each of the chunks of data.  The second pass is called “axial coding”. During this phase of the coding according to Neuman (2006), one is looking for connections, strategies, conditions, processes, causes, consequences, and interactions between the categories or codes.  Some codes may be combined. When organizing the data, it will be structured around the questions and emerging themes per the Neuman (2006) method.  

Ethical Concerns

The principles set by codes of conduct (American Psychological Association, 2010) guide best practices of psychology professionals conducting research studies.  These will be adhered to for this study.  Although police officers are trained professionals, each officer will be responsible for their own conduct in regards to the morals and ethics they display as they interact with persons during each domestic disturbance call.  Some ethical concerns might include conflict of interests, applying proper judgement in regards to ethics and the law in assessing who the perpetrator is and who the victim is, and the multiplicity of roles which may be created by these situations (Sorsa, Kiikkala, & Astedt-Kurki, 2015). For example, often police officers especially in small localities could form dual roles, such as protector of a victim, and mental health assessor of a victim or perpetrator on scene. Law enforcement officers’ moral beliefs and values will enter in to the handling of the call, resulting in possible further harm to the victim as a crime such as assault or sexual assault is dismissed as symptomatic of a disorder such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in say a veteran (Markowitz, & Watson, 2015). There is also self-disclosure, confidentiality, and a need for personal interventions and impairment which are mandates to be alert to their own signs of emotional and physical distress.  Police officers do not always practice this kind of awareness as their ethical code is not the same as those of psychology researchers but, all of the above considerations are much needed. Although ethical considerations are relative to the competencies that are required by their particular field, the roles assumed by officers on domestic disturbance scenes make these items concerning especially when there are children on the scene (Lessard, Drouin, Germain, Alvarez-Lizotte, & Turcotte, 2014).  

The Social Change Implications of the Research

Many officer deaths are caused each year across the United States by domestic violence as experienced during domestic disturbance calls (Blair, Fowler, Betz, & Baumgardner, 2016).  Also, an enormous amount of women and children are negatively impacted by these situations in a variety of ways (Tade, & Nwanosike, 2016) such as depression, anxiety, suicide, dissociation (Yalch, Black, Martin, & Levendosky, 2016) and repeating cycles of abuse. It is a far-reaching crime and so the social change impact is also far-reaching. Since abusers use the legal system currently to further harass and stalk their victims in the vilest of ways, the testimonies of highly trained officers will ensure that justice is truly served in these cases and arrests are made as needed (Johnson, & Dai, 2016). Preventing further escalation, violence, and fatalities will also be a product of more research in this area. 

The more global goal is that perhaps someday domestic violence will not be so rampant nor no longer largely go unpunished. Officer deaths might be prevented.  More women and children might lead peaceful lives free of violence and fear. In short, safety and happiness for countless numbers might be attainable in ways that currently they are not, if the perspective of officers during these “gatekeeping” moments, these opportunities before the crimes that lead to the deaths of so many, can be better understood. As the shared experiences of law enforcement officers are recorded by the researcher, this information can then be used by administration to devise better ways to assist officers on the scene of domestic disturbance calls which ultimately may provide better relief to all parties involved.

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