According to The Tennessean, the Nashville Police Department has failed to take a zero-tolerance policy towards members of the force arrested on domestic violence charges.

Sadly, domestic abuse is two to four times more common in police families than the rest of the population. This means that Nashville's unwillingness to confront the problem -- preferring to give the offending officers a few days suspension -- is contributing to a national problem. But more pressingly, the department's failure to punish and dismiss domestic abusers means that guns stay in the hands of violent officers, and that those officers see no real consequences for their actions, which can only serve to increase violence at home.

In addition, the Nashville Police Department has in the last few years seen a vast increase in the number of domestic violence cases it failed to resolve or dismissed. Indeed, in the last several years, the number of unresolved cases went from about 200 to 5,600. This only goes to show that both on the force and in the community, domestic violence is not taken seriously. And when it's not, the results are often fatal.

Tell the Nashville Police Department, Chief Steve Anderson, and Mayor Karl Dean, to take domestic violence charges seriously, both on the force and in the community; to adopt a zero-tolerance policy towards those with DV charges; and to revise their protocol to ensure this problem is fixed in the future.

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