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Abstract: 

This article speaks to a topic that has received only intermittent exposure by the mainstream media—cases of homicide perpetrated by law enforcement officers. Those who pay attention to the mainstream news cycle are well aware of the spate of police-on-citizen and, more recently, citizen-on-police shootings that have marred cities across the country this past summer (of 2016). That violence is associated with policing should be no surprise—after all, they carry lethal weapons, and so if an officer is motivated to harm a partner or other family member, he or she has the means to do so. Author Leigh Goodmark starts out with a case epitomizing, in living color, the threat to life and limb faced by many spouses of abusive police officers, who ought to be considered armed and dangerous but are all too often, instead, protected by the code of silence prevalent among law enforcement entities. © 2016, Leigh Goodmark.

Keywords: Police Domestic Violence

Affiliations:  1: University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.