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This site is about domestic violence perpetrated by police officers. I thought this site was interesting because it deals with a subset of domestic violence that is not always on the top of the discussion list. It talks about the added problems that victims have when their abuser is a cop who has been trained to be the authority figure.

I agree that this site is interesting and worth noting because it does happen and when it does, there is practically nothing a civilian victim can do against a government paid law enforcement officer. It was difficult for me to read because it reminded me of a classmate I had in high school who had been physically abused by his father who was a judge. His story was particularly difficult for me to understand because he had volunteered all of this information about his horrible home life without warning. It was also interesting to me because he had decided to leave his house to live with his grandmother, which is actually how we started carpooling. He was a year older than I, but he has a younger brother in my year who stayed at home with his parents. I never knew how to act around him knowing what I did even though he hadn't told me. The boy in my year must have had a crush on one of my best friends and had a poor way of showing it, which I think was partly due to his violent family dynamic. My girlfriend still tells me about how he stalked her and still calls and sends her odd and unwelcome messages.

I also agree that this site is very interesting. Not only does it expose a flaw of prosecuting domestic violence in our legal system, but also shows how traditional "masculine" roles influence domestic violence. I like that the author shows how police culture, which conforms to many stereotypes about masculinity, works to increase rates and intensity of domestic violence, rather than only looking at problems with the individual abusers. The only thing I didn't like about this article was that I felt it down played the difficulties that women who have not been abused by officers face. The beginning of the article made it seem as if there was a wide network of support and help for victims of domestic violence within the legal system, which is not typically the case.

I wanted to bookmark the recap because this latest episode of Criminal Minds involves so many elements of the articles we have read, as well as the class discussions. It's about a white male police officer at the Texas border who was killing illegal immigrants who were trying to cross into the US. The female sheriff was doing her best to end the murders but wasn't getting any cooperation from her deputies or the government. She ends up getting killed by the police officer because she was getting too close to solving the crimes. The deputies in the town kept wasting time by trying to pin the murders on a local gang instead of trying to find the actual murderer. Throughout the episode there was talk about how things like this are allowed to happen with little action taken by the government, which coincides with many of the articles that we have read. There was also an illegal immigrant woman who was separated from her family by the person who was helping them get across the border and he raped her, which is what the border rape article was all about.

The page preceding this states that one in three women in the military will be sexually assaulted during their tour of duty. This number is amazing to me and it makes me wonder what life is really like for women in the military. In such a male dominated institution, the women of the military have been silenced. NOW president Kim Gandy is calling for president Barack Obama to address this issue and see that it stops.

This is a great example of our society being male dominated. How are we supposed to make change when the majority of government, law, and policy makers are men? Those involved with public service are typically those in control of delegating positions and reforming laws. It is important for the few women who are involved to raise their voices and for us, the citizens, to elect more women into office.

Before joining this class, I had knowledge of such happenings within our military, but I never had any idea the numbers were so high. I am able to acknowledge that yes these things happen, but it is hard to accept how often they occur. Posttraumatic stress disorder is an issue that is raised all the time, of men coming back from war and being so traumatized that they cannot continue on with their daily lives. In a number of movies and TV shows I have watched, soldiers coming back from war have been depicted as abusing their wives, but what about their fellow female soldiers? This is an issue that surely needs to be address now not only by the media to the public but within the government. Morgan brings up a good, but scary point of how are we suppose to change anything when those in power are men and men supporting the actions in the military by not speaking out. I do not know what the answer to this problem is, but I know that acknowledging and addressing the issue is the first step.