by Susanna Hope and Alex Roslin
Golden Inkwell Books
9/30/2015, paperback
SKU: 9780994861702
Susanna Hope lived another side of policing in a two-decade marriage to a violent, hard-drinking cop with an explosive temper, who was twice her weight.
In Police Wife, Hope and award-winning investigative journalist Alex Roslin take you inside the tightly closed police world and one of its most explosive secrets -- domestic abuse in up to a staggering 40% of police households, which departments mostly ignore or let slide.
Hope's gripping and inspiring survival story and Roslin's pioneering investigative work give a rare front-seat look at the amazing struggles and courage of abused police spouses worldwide -- from Montreal to Los Angeles, Puerto Rico, the UK, Australia and South Africa -- the ordeals of a handful of intrepid cops trying to change policing from within and why the abuse epidemic rages largely unchecked.
Police Wife reveals that cops commit up to 15 times more domestic violence than the public. One study found that just 6% of police departments normally terminated an officer after a sustained domestic violence complaint. Officers often get disciplined more harshly for stealing or making a false statement than for assaulting an intimate partner. In one large police force, an abusive male cop may have as little as a one-in-6,500 chance of ever being charged.
Police Wife, the first investigative book on the subject, shows how abuse in police homes affects us all and is connected to botched responses to 911 domestic calls at other homes, police sexual harassment of women cops and teen female drivers at traffic stops, police killings of African Americans and growing social inequality.
Also see advice for survivors, friends and family and recommendations for change.
PART OF THE PROCEEDS from this book go to fund research on police domestic violence.
Reviews:
"A must-read. Thoroughly documented." - Deborah Harrison, sociologist, University of New Brunswick