Behind the Badge
The Hidden Crisis of Officer-Involved Domestic Violence
Most stories about officer-involved domestic violence never make it beyond a local blotter or a line in a court docket. But every so often, a case is so stark it briefly pierces the silence.
In Adams County, Illinois, a jury convicted former Brown County sheriff’s deputy Cody R. Shaffer of aggravated domestic battery by strangulation and aggravated battery of a pregnant person. Prosecutors said he beat his nine-months-pregnant girlfriend, struck her with a pistol, and strangled her during a January 2023 assault.
Up in Chicago, surveillance and arrest reports describe officer Francisco Galvan waiting outside the Englewood (7th District) police station in August 2024. He allegedly yanked his on-duty officer-girlfriend out of her squad car, pinned her to the pavement, and attacked her—all while drunk, with a loaded gun on him. He was charged with misdemeanor domestic battery and DUI. Months later, the Cook County State’s Attorney dropped all charges, and he petitioned to have the record expunged.
In Joliet, ex-officer Joseph Robinson was charged in September 2024 with felony criminal trespass, misdemeanor domestic battery, and interfering with a woman’s attempts to report domestic violence. His ex-girlfriend told police he forced his way into her bedroom and grabbed her by the neck.
These aren’t isolated “bad apple” stories. They are small windows into a bigger, harder question:
How common is domestic violence among law enforcement—and why do so few cases see the light of day?
The Numbers We Think We Know
First, an unpopular truth: we do not have a precise, reliable nationwide rate for officer-involved domestic violence.
What we do have are patchy studies and scoping reviews that point in the same direction: the problem is big, and probably bigger than what’s on paper.
A widely cited fact sheet summarizing early research notes that two studies found at least 40% of police families reported some form of domestic violence, compared with about 10% of families in the general population in those particular studies.
A more recent review by researchers Kimberly French and Keaton Fletcher (2022) gathers modern studies and finds estimates ranging from 4.8% to 40% of officer families experiencing domestic violence, depending on definitions and methods. They conclude that “true prevalence remains unknown,” but the range is clearly troubling.
A 2024 scoping review of police-perpetrated domestic and family violence by Anderson and colleagues looks across Australian and international research and flatly states that prevalence is unknown, but existing data shows “high” levels of abuse and strong reasons to think official figures are underestimates.
When you zoom out to the general population, domestic violence isn’t rare there either. The Council on Criminal Justice (2024) notes that domestic violence is so under-counted and inconsistently defined that even getting a baseline for ordinary households is difficult. New global WHO data released in November 2025 estimates that almost 1 in 3 women worldwide have experienced physical or sexual partner violence or sexual violence by a non-partner in their lifetime.
So when you see someone say “40% of police families vs. 10% of everyone else,” that’s too neat. The 40% figure comes from specific older studies, with broad definitions and small samples. The 10% number understates how widespread domestic violence is in the general population.
But if you read across the modern literature, the pattern is consistent: domestic violence in police families is at least as common as in other families—and many experts believe it’s higher, possibly significantly so.
The exact multiplier? We honestly don’t know. And that uncertainty is part of the problem.
Illinois: A Case Study in Uneven Accountability
Illinois provides a useful, if grim, cross-section of how officer-involved domestic violence plays out in real life.
Brown County/Adams County: “Get Off Me”
The Shaffer case stands out because it went all the way to trial and produced a felony conviction. In May 2024, an Adams County jury convicted him on two aggravated counts but acquitted him of the Class X armed violence charge—the most serious felony in Illinois short of first-degree murder.
Prosecutors said he struck his pregnant girlfriend with a Ruger .380 pistol, strangled her, and threatened her. The victim was able to record some of the attack, and that recording proved crucial to the conviction.
The sentencing? Forty-eight months of probation. No additional jail time beyond credit for 517 days served, which included time on GPS monitoring.
Chicago: An Officer Attacking an Officer
The Galvan case is different, but just as revealing. In August 2024, officer Francisco Galvan allegedly waited outside the Englewood police station, pulled his on-duty girlfriend (also a CPD officer) from her squad car, and pinned her to the ground. Other officers had to intervene. He was charged with domestic battery, DUI, and a citation for illegally transporting alcohol.
According to reports, the State’s Attorney dropped all charges the following month. Galvan moved to expunge the record, and a judge restored his driver’s license, citing “lack of due process” in the suspension.
Same state, very different outcome: one officer convicted and facing felony consequences, another whose charges vanish despite an incident so serious that colleagues had to physically pull him off a fellow cop.
Joliet: Ex-Officer at the Bedroom Door
In Joliet, ex-officer Joseph Robinson faces charges after a woman reported he entered her bedroom without permission, climbed into her bed, and grabbed her by the neck. In a separate misdemeanor case, he also faces charges of theft and criminal damage to property.
Robinson resigned from the department in March 2024, months before his arrest on the domestic violence charges. As of early 2025, those cases were still pending.
Chicago’s Broader Pattern
If you ask how often this happens within a single department, the Chicago-based outlet Unraveled Press offers a rare, detailed look. In “STRIPPED: The Chicago cops who lost their badges in 2024,” reporters found that at least 80 CPD officers had their police powers stripped at some point between January and mid-November 2024. Many were benched for domestic-violence allegations.
The domestic-violence section reads like a grim roster:
Officer Dexavier Langham was arrested after his girlfriend reported he hit her in the face, pulled her hair, and choked her. He was later found not guilty, but CPD still reassigned him to an alternate unit.
Detective Marco Torres was arrested and charged with domestic battery and assault, ultimately convicted of assault and put on electronic monitoring. He is also the subject of a whistleblower suit alleging CPD ignored his “history of violence and misconduct toward female colleagues.”
Officer Jose Rodriguez was accused by a woman he was dating of showing up intoxicated, kicking in her back door, smashing objects, and ripping off a microwave door. COPA recommended he be stripped of powers in July 2024, but he stayed on patrol until October.
Multiple others were accused of choking sisters, shoving partners to the ground during custody exchanges, or attacking girlfriends—cases that resulted in suspensions, reassignments, or dropped charges, not necessarily termination.
Unraveled also published “Somewhere nobody would find her,” detailing a COPA report where investigators wrote: “Police officers committing domestic violence seriously undermines public trust in the Department. This level of behavior warrants significant consequences.”
The pattern isn’t just that officers are accused of harming partners. It’s that what happens next is wildly inconsistent.
Why Officer-Involved Domestic Violence Is Uniquely Dangerous
Domestic violence is always about power and control. When the abuser is a cop, the power imbalance is supercharged.
Researchers and survivor advocates point to several unique risk factors:
Training and authority. Officers are trained and authorized to use force, to control chaotic situations, and to read people’s behavior as “threatening” or “non-compliant.” Those skills can be turned inward on a partner.
Access to weapons. Many officers keep firearms both on and off duty. When an argument escalates, the presence of guns makes lethal outcomes more likely—especially for women, who are already at significant risk of being killed by an intimate partner.
System knowledge. Officers know exactly how the justice system works: how reports are taken, how victims are questioned, which shelters exist and where they are. That knowledge can be used to manipulate a victim’s options or discredit her in advance.
Professional credibility. On paper, the officer is the “expert” on violence and risk. Survivors describe judges and even shelter staff assuming the cop must be the reasonable one. The National Domestic Violence Hotline has published survivor stories where women describe officers using their badge as a threat: “Who do you think they’ll believe, you or me?”
When your abuser has a badge, your world shrinks. If you call 911, you might be summoning his co-workers. If you go to Internal Affairs, you’re walking into his building. If you seek a protective order, you’re asking a system to restrain one of its own.
The Code of Silence and How It Protects Abusers
The phrase “code of silence” gets tossed around a lot, but in the context of officer-involved domestic violence, it’s not just about colleagues lying for each other. It’s an entire structure that makes accountability the exception, not the rule.
The Official Side: Policies on Paper
On paper, the U.S. actually has some strong language about this. The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) developed a Model Policy on Domestic Violence by Police Officers back in 2003, urging departments to adopt zero-tolerance policies, mandatory reporting, and clear consequences.
The 2024 scoping review by Anderson and colleagues notes that policies like the IACP model can look robust, but enforcement is spotty. They highlight multiple oversight reports—including one on Victoria Police in Australia—where internal investigations downplayed or mishandled domestic-violence allegations against officers, despite having policies that said all the right things.
The Informal Side: Protect the Badge, Not the Victim
In practice, the code of silence shows up in quieter, practical ways:
Soft handling of complaints. Colleagues may “talk to” an officer instead of formally documenting a partner’s call for help. Incidents become “family issues,” not crimes.
Slow-walking oversight. In Chicago, COPA recommended that officer Jose Rodriguez be stripped of his powers in July 2024 for an alleged break-in and property destruction at a girlfriend’s home. The department didn’t actually strip him until late October—months later—while he remained on duty.
Dropping or downgrading charges. Galvan’s case is one example: initial charges, then a quiet dismissal, followed by a move to erase the record.
Reassign, don’t remove. Unraveled’s data shows many officers with domestic-violence allegations being moved into alternate response sections or placed on leave—still on the payroll, still with a path back, even when patterns of complaints span years.
To be clear: some officers are fired. Some are convicted. Some are acquitted, and some allegations may be false. But the default posture of many agencies, in the eyes of survivors and watchdogs, is to minimize, delay, and keep it quiet.
The Chilling Effect on Victims
The result is that victims—usually women and often partners of officers—learn very quickly how little room they have.
Research and advocacy groups consistently point out that partners of officers often do not trust that calling the police will help. They worry calls will be routed through their abuser’s colleagues or that their complaint will somehow leak back to him.
In some departments, there is no independent reporting channel for officer-involved domestic violence. Complaints are handled internally by units that ultimately answer to the same leadership that worries about public image.
Advocates in places like Victoria, Australia—where over 680 officers were investigated for family violence, sexual misconduct, or harassment over five years—argue that a “protect their own” culture is a key reason the true scale is still unknown.
If you know your partner’s colleagues might close ranks around him, reporting isn’t just scary—it can feel pointless or even dangerous.
Why This Matters Beyond Individual Cases
This isn’t just about whether one officer goes to jail or loses his badge. It’s about public trust and the integrity of the entire system.
When a department quietly keeps officers with histories of domestic-violence allegations on the street, it raises obvious questions:
How are they handling domestic-violence calls in the community?
What message does it send to survivors who dial 911, confident that “the police” will protect them?
What does it do to officers who don’t abuse their partners, but see their colleagues shielded from consequences?
Even oversight bodies know the stakes. COPA’s own line—”Police officers committing domestic violence seriously undermines public trust in the Department”—is unusually blunt for an official report.
If you can’t trust the system to protect victims inside the house, you have to wonder how seriously it protects them outside.
What Real Accountability Would Look Like
There’s no quick fix, but research and advocacy work suggest some concrete moves:
Independent reporting and investigation. Survivors should be able to report abuse by an officer to a truly independent body, not to the officer’s colleagues or chain of command. That body needs power to investigate and refer for prosecution.
Mandatory tracking and public data. Right now, the U.S. has no unified database of officer-involved domestic violence. French and Fletcher argue that without systematic tracking, we can’t even tell if reforms work.
Automatic removal of guns and badge after credible allegations. This is already standard in some policies but not consistently enforced. Given the lethality risk, temporary disarmament and suspension pending investigation should be the default in serious cases.
Support for victims who are “inside the house.” Partners of officers need safe ways to access shelters, legal help, and safety planning that don’t route through the department. Hotlines and courts should specifically ask whether the abusive partner is in law enforcement—and have protocols for that.
Culture change: breaking the loyalty script. Ultimately, the code of silence is a culture problem. Officers need to understand that turning in a colleague who abuses his partner is loyalty to the badge, not betrayal. That message has to come from the very top, and it has to be backed with real consequences when people look the other way.
If This Is Personal for You
If you’re reading this because you’re worried about your own relationship—especially if your partner is in law enforcement—a few things are worth saying plainly:
You’re not “crazy” for feeling trapped. The system really is harder to navigate when the abuser has a badge, a gun, and friends on the inside.
You deserve safety, and you deserve to be believed.
If it’s safe to do so, you might consider speaking to a national or local domestic-violence hotline, a legal aid group, or an advocate unaffiliated with your partner’s department. They can help you think through options without triggering internal politics.
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) 24-hour confidential support available