On Dec. 12, 2014, 32-year-old Stephen Rozniakowski—a Philadelphia-area police officer—murdered his ex-girlfriend, Valerie Morrow, just hours after she had been granted a restraining order against him.
Rozniakowski, who had previously been charged with 75 counts of stalking and harassment, also managed to shoot and injure Morrow’s 15-year-old daughter in the attack. The violent rampage was reportedly fueled by anger over having been issued the protective order, which prompted Rozniakowski to show up at Morrow’s home with a firearm later that day.
Stephen Rozniakowski’s case is not an anomaly. Rather, it is part of an ongoing and pervasive pattern of domestic violence perpetrated by police officers, usually against women.
According to the National Center for Women and Policing, domestic violence is two to four times more likely to occur in families of police officers than among the general population.
Within the past few weeks, police officers from New York and New Jersey have been arrested for stalking and domestic violence. Police officers, protected by a code of silence, usually go unpunished for their crimes. They are protected by a system that relies on police to protect property instead of people, and neglects the epidemic violence perpetrated against women.
Following the killings of NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, much has been made of the need to support the officers’ families. However, when it comes to domestic violence, there are no popular cries to help those cops’ families.
This is not to say that domestic violence never breaks into the mainstream media. When perpetrated by professional athletes —particularly men of color — it is front-page news. According to the available statistics, the rate of domestic violence among NFL players is lower than the average rate of domestic violence in the general population (whereas for police officers it is much higher). The media rarely mentions the statistics that show that cops are by far more dangerous.
The default capitalist media narrative of police officers is that they are “heroes.” Glaringly absent from the national discourse on police violence is the continuing epidemic of misogyny and violence against women, especially the spouses, partners and children of police officers, as well as women in the general population who have experienced rape, sexual assault and attack at the hands of cops.
Just as the police have carried out a campaign of violence against Black and Brown people since the United States’ inception, they have also been able to harass, assault and kill women with impunity.
Women have rarely been able to rely on the corrupt criminal justice system for “protection.” It is no surprise that the same system that allows police officers to murder unarmed people of color also offers free passes for rapists and abusers. From small towns like Steubenville, Ohio—where a 14-year-old girl’s rapists were given little more than a slap on the wrist—to college campuses like Columbia University, which has failed to expel rapists from their institution, it is clear that the system is not designed to deliver justice for the victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.
