Are Domestic Incidents Really More Dangerous to Police? Findings from the 2016 National Incident Based Reporting System

Abstract

It is widely believed among police officers that domestic incidents are among the most dangerous incidents to which they respond. However, most research in this area suffers from the “denominator problem,” where prior studies have focused on incidents resulting in harm to police officers and failed to account for incidents not resulting in harm. Such methodologies can produce drastically misleading results. This paper uses data from the 2016 National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) to overcome the denominator problem. We examine the probability of (1) an officer being assaulted and (2) an officer being injured or killed when responding to a domestic incident compared to a non-domestic incident while controlling for other potentially important variables. Results indicate that officers are significantly more likely to be assaulted or injured when responding to non-domestic incidents. Implications for law enforcement training, victim legitimacy, and future research are discussed.

Keywords:

• Domestic violence
• violence against police
• assaults
• injuries
• NIBRS

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Matt Ashby, Tim Dooley, Kyle McLean, Marie and Rob Tillyer, Sam Walker, Scott Wolfe, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 For exceptions, see Garner and Clemmer (1986), Ellis et al. (1993), and Stanford and Mowry (1990). Notably, these studies are now dated and analyzed data from just a few agencies.

2 Included in these data are state and local law enforcement officers, officers in corrections departments, federal agencies, and other regulatory commissions that do not routinely respond to calls for service or engage in independent enforcement or investigative activity.

3 See https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx.

4 For additional information about NIBRS, see https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/ucr/nibrs.

5 See https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/resource-pages/cius-summary.

6 In a sensitivity analysis, we restricted the sample to incidents involving murder/nonnegligent manslaughter, kidnapping/abduction, rape, sodomy, sexual assault with an object, robbery, aggravated assault, simple assault, or intimidation. The results were consistent with our primary, more inclusive models (see Appendix, Table A1).

7 A reviewer pointed out that cursing or spitting at an officer can result in a simple assault charge. In a sensitivity analysis, we recoded our first dependent variable so that simple assaults were in the “0” category. Results were substantively similar (see Appendix, Table A2).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Justin Nix

Justin Nix is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He received his PhD in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of South Carolina. His research is centered in policing with a focus on legitimacy. His work has recently appeared in Justice Quarterly, Crime & Delinquency, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, and Journal of Criminal Justice.

Tara N. Richards

Tara Richards is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She received her PhD in Criminology from the University of South Florida. Her research is centered in victimology, with recent articles appearing in Law and Human Behavior, Crime & Delinquency, and Family Relations.

Gillian M. Pinchevsky

Gillian Pinchevsky is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. She received her PhD in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of South Carolina. Her research primarily focuses on criminal justice and community responses to violence against women. Her recent work has been published in Police Quarterly, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, and Criminal Justice Policy Review.

Emily M. Wright

Emily Wright is a Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She received her PhD in Criminal Justice from the University of Cincinnati. Her research interests include intimate partner violence and female offending. Recent publications appear in Crime & Delinquency, Child Abuse and Neglect, and Policing & Society.