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> "Two studies have found that at least 40% of police officer families experience domestic violence, in contrast to 10% of families in the general population," the National Center for Women & Policing says. "A third study of older and more experienced officers found a rate of 24%, indicating that domestic violence is 2-4 times more common among police families than American families in general."

http://womenandpolicing.com/violenceFS.asp#notes

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Surely there's a segment of the population with similar personality traits predominant to police officers that don't become police officers. One would think they'd also have similar incident of domestic violence if this were a personality trait?

Personally, I would have no interest in dealing with the horrible things people do to one another, on a regular basis, as part of my job. No thanks. Reading the news is bad enough, I wouldn't want to live it.

No one is claiming it's a personality trait, though that absolutely could be a part of it. More likely, it's because police officers can act with impunity in pretty much every scenario. Add in a high-pressure job, and you've got a recipe for abuse.

Nevermind the fact that steroid abuse is common in the police. The BMJ has a lovely factsheet on anabolic steroid abuse: https://bestpractice.bmj.com/topics/en-us/987

Risk factors: "employment as nightclub bouncer, professional male dancer, professional wrestler, or law enforcement officer"

> Surely there's a segment of the population with similar personality traits predominant to police officers that don't become police officers. One would think they'd also have similar incident of domestic violence

Funny enough, casual criminals fit that picture quite well. That would explain why they are attracted to "the horrible things people do to one another, on a regular basis" - to a non-trivial extent, they share the character traits of the people who do these things in the first place.

Not as a counterpoint to the domestic violence issue but to broaden the picture of symptoms of widespread mental illness, the suicide rate is also higher than the general population.

> “The Ruderman Family Foundation, a philanthropic institution, also found that first responders die by suicide at a higher rate than people in the general population, according to an April 2018 report.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/for-third-straight-year-polic...

> Common threads between suicides have been cited, including pressures of the job.

Most important is probably access to means and methods - easy access to guns.

Plus familiarity with using a gun.

honestly, is this really surprising? people become police officers not just to "help others" but to do it through the use of force, weapons and authority.

if you group people by profession and gender, you can probably find 1000 things that are specific to that group. it's like saying that programmers/engineers have a higher probability of being good at math or being introverted vs the general population.

If you follow the footnotes, you'll see that the only references for this claim are almost 30 years old. One of the two is just a Congressional hearing.

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