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Wisconsin takes action to fight high rates of domestic abuse among cops

Christmas has twice come and gone since Wayne Coulter last saw Lindsey Stahl alive.

The hurt hangs in his voice as he talks about life without the girl he helped raise since she was a toddler. Words of anger, frustration and sadness come next. They catch in his throat as he tries to rationalize how Lindsey's life and the lives of five others were taken in Wisconsin's most extreme, deadly case of officer-involved domestic violence.

Fourteen-year-old Lindsey died on Oct. 7, 2007, in the small, northern Wisconsin town of Crandon. Jarred by the news that his former girlfriend was seeing someone new, 20-year-old Tyler Peterson, an officer employed by the Crandon and Forest County departments, went to the home of his former girlfriend. Upon entering the apartment, he opened fire with an assault rifle on all seven people who were there for a pizza party. A standoff ensued between Peterson and his friends on the force. Peterson eventually killed himself with a pistol.

Now, the families of three of the six victims and the sole survivor of the shooting have filed a civil suit against the police departments that employed Peterson. The suit charges that the police chief and sheriff knew that Peterson had shown a pattern of domestic violence and abuse of authority but did nothing about it.

Before Forest County denied the initial claim that preceded the lawsuit. County Corporation Counsel Paul Payant told the Associated Press that the Sheriff's Department had no way of knowing that Peterson was capable of such violence.

Bitter feelings continue to swirl around the community, even toward the families of the victims. Coulter said they have anonymously been receiving "nasty letters saying we should drop the suit, and we should be hanging our heads in shame.

"It's pretty rough living up here now."

News of the crime in Crandon rang out far beyond the small town's borders; even the Los Angeles Times reported on the story. The crime not only received national exposure, but put faces to a grim reality of the law enforcement community, a reality seldom discussed outside internal affairs offices or among officers themselves.

Yet those in the know -- the officers, prosecutors and domestic violence advocates -- have become increasingly aware of the higher prevalence of domestic violence in the families of law enforcement officers.

The National Center for Women and Policing cites two studies from the mid-1990s that have found at least 40 percent of police officer families experience domestic violence, defined as verbal, psychological or physical abuse, in contrast to 10-20 percent of families in the general population. The studies are well-regarded and often cited by law enforcement and domestic violence advocates locally and nationally.

In the Madison area, Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney said two officers had been disciplined internally for domestic violence incidents in the past year, but no criminal charges were brought against them. They are still on the force. Following an open records request, the Madison Police Department reported that one officer has been fired or suspended for domestic violence in the past five years. That was Russell Henderson, who was fired in 2006.

In Wisconsin, nobody is keeping track of the problem. Unless an officer shoots or severely abuses someone, news about an incident will rarely make its way out of internal affairs, and no state agency collects the data.

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