October 13, 2025
Detroit News, The (MI)
Author/Byline: Kara Berg
Weeks before Kandice McMillian's boyfriend abused her for the last time, she told him he was going to jail if he hurt her again.
Donovan Donehue, then a police officer with the Detroit Police Department, responded: "I am the jail. I am the police. They're not gonna do nothing to me," McMillian said.
McMillian, 36, who dated Donehue for about two years, said she never called the police before when Donehue hurt her. What was the point, she wondered. It felt like nothing would happen if she called, because Donehue had told her so. Though she lived in Southfield, not Detroit where Donehue worked, she worried police wouldn't want to arrest one of their own.
What she didn't know was that Donehue had been charged with domestic violence before in Ingham County in 2007. That information is inaccessible to the public, however, because of a Michigan second-chance law for first-time domestic abusers.
McMillian told The Detroit News that she finally called the police after Donehue slammed her head into the floor multiple times one night in November, leaving her woozy and seeing stars the first time, then dislocating her knee when she tried to break her fall and hit the couch.
The Southfield officer who responded asked her why she was just now calling for help.
"Because y'all are together, like y'all are in cahoots," McMillian recalled telling him.
Donehue, who was ultimately convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence and no longer works for the Detroit Police Department, is one of at least 100 police officers in Michigan charged with domestic violence or another crime against a family member since 2015, according to a Detroit News tabulation. He did not respond to The News' request for comment.
Even though no central database exists to track domestic violence by law enforcement officers, experts said it's more pervasive than some may realize – Hamtramck Police Officer Saeed Rizvee was charged Oct. 1 with domestic violence after he allegedly assaulted his wife – due in part to laws that allow convictions to be deemed nonpublic, or in essence invisible to some employers and the general public, and the stigma that keeps victims from reporting domestic violence.
Legislation is pending in Lansing that would hold police officers who commit domestic violence to a higher standard due to the nature of a job that requires public trust.
Sen. Sarah Anthony, D-Lansing, introduced a bill in May that would modify licensing requirements for officers, including allowing for the revocation of officers' licenses if they are convicted of a misdemeanor involving domestic violence or assault and battery of a pregnant woman or a person with whom an officer is in an intimate relationship. This would ensure no one with a history of domestic violence or abuse can continue to be an officer, Anthony said.
"When members of law enforcement commit crimes – especially violent ones– they're not just breaking the law, they're breaking the public's trust," Anthony said in a statement. "Any department that allows officers charged with domestic violence to remain in uniform sends a chilling message that accountability is negotiable. ... (The bill) helps close the gaps that too often allow misconduct to slip through the cracks."
The bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Civil Rights, Judiciary and Public Safety on May 29. It has not yet moved out of committee. Sen. Stephanie Chang, D-Detroit and chair of the committee, said the bill is part of a police and transparency package that she hopes will be moved to the full Senate this term.
Meanwhile, researchers and experts are calling for more studies to accurately determine how often police officers commit domestic violence, since current data is now decades old.
This lack of research may, in part, be because of a reluctance to fund a study that will bring attention to the fact that "those policing the crime and those committing it are often the same person," said Leigh Goodmark, a law professor and associate dean for research and faculty development at the University of Maryland who specializes in gender-based violence and has studied domestic violence by police.
"Why would you think that an officer would be trustworthy in responding to intimate partner violence if it's something that they're condoning and actually doing in their own home?" Goodmark said. "You should be very concerned about how exactly police officers are responding to intimate partner violence given that they may have a greater propensity for perpetrating it."
Ronald Wiles Jr., executive director of the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police, said he doesn't often see officers charged with domestic violence, but it does happen. He said he has not seen officers given any leeway in charging or sentencing because of their jobs; if anything, it has been the opposite.
But, "in some cases, I could see them being held to a higher standard because of their job," Wiles said. "No one wants a law enforcement officer out there who is violating or breaking the law, especially when it comes to domestic violence."
Wiles said he supports the part of Anthony's bill that would revoke licenses for officers convicted of domestic violence, but not the full legislation, because there are two other bills tied to it that he doesn't fully support.
But James Tignanelli, president of the Police Officers Association of Michigan, said he does not support the proposed bill because he thinks misdemeanors should be considered individually. Revoking an officer's license for a domestic violence misdemeanor would be "stretching it" in some cases, he said.
"It could have been a bad night, not to make light of what happened," Tignanelli said. "There are a lot of guys charged with misdemeanors who really shouldn't lose their job. Right now, I think the process is pretty solid."
Defining the problem
To capture a snapshot of the scope of the problem, The News sought information about cases from five of the six largest police departments in Michigan, as well as tallied incidents reported in the media across the state involving every jurisdiction for the past decade.
The tally includes 49 officers charged with misdemeanor domestic violence; 14 officers charged with sexual assault of partners, relatives or child relatives; and four officers charged with assault with the intent to cause great bodily harm, a felony that can carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. In one case, a Detroit police lieutenant was charged four times with domestic violence, felonious assault and disturbing the peace, though he was never convicted. He was later promoted.
The officers charged come from agencies all over Michigan, though the Detroit Police Department, Michigan's second-largest agency with more than 2,500 sworn officers, has the highest number of cases, with 54 officers charged since 2015.
A Detroit police officer who pleaded no contest to criminal damage of his ex-girlfriend's car in Toledo was sentenced to three years of inactive probation, and the judge ruled he was not allowed to have a gun – except for his work with DPD and the military. He remains employed with DPD.
In another case, a Michigan State Police trooper was charged with domestic violence in 2021, though the case was dismissed when his wife refused to cooperate, according to MSP records. MSP fired the trooper after an internal investigation concluded he lied and used his relationship with the investigator to influence the investigation. He used police techniques to get his wife to recant, according to MSP's investigation. But an arbitrator found there was not enough evidence to support his termination, and the state police had to rehire him.
Detroit police declined to release disciplinary information on most of the officers who had been charged and have not responded to a public records request filed in August for that information.
In most cases, convicted officers left the department, either by firing or resignation. At least six officers lost their law enforcement licenses. For those who remained at their department, either after a conviction or after a case dismissal, most of the discipline was not publicly available because Michigan's Employee Right to Know Act requires that disciplinary records older than four years cannot be shared in most instances.
In McMillian's case involving her Detroit police officer boyfriend, after she reached out to police in 2024, the Southfield officer who spoke to her assured her they weren't in "cahoots" and that his agency took domestic violence seriously, she said. Oakland County prosecutors charged Donehue with second-offense domestic violence, a misdemeanor, in Southfield District Court. A jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to 35 days in jail and two years of probation, though he is appealing his conviction.
Anti-domestic violence advocates said police can be significantly more dangerous abusers because of the power and training provided to them by the state, especially for those inclined toward coercion and authoritarianism.
"Until their whole ethos and police culture of the boys club and having each other's back, the code of silence and all that, until that changes, there's not going to be any taking it seriously," said Diane Wetendorf, a retired Chicago-based advocate and counselor for domestic violence survivors. "It's a whole macho, patriarchal attitude, and it's deeply ingrained in that culture that if you can't control your wife, who can you control?"
Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison declined to be interviewed on the issue.
Detroit Police Cmdr. Michael McGinnis said he could not comment on specific cases, but said the department ensures its officers know what is at stake if officers are found guilty of a domestic violence charge.
"Members know that if they engage in an act of domestic violence and there is evidence to support such, they can't be police," McGinnis said.
When convictions become nonpublic
In some cases in Michigan, abusers can have their cases made inaccessible to the public if they are first-time offenders charged with the assault of a partner. The law was enacted in 1978 to give offenders a second chance at a clean slate.
This happened to Detroit police officer Tyus Monroe, who was sentenced July 2 in Oakland County for domestic violence. After sentencing, his case became nonpublic, an option available for first-time offenders under Michigan law.
At least 17 Michigan officers' convictions from 2015 to 2025 have been made nonpublic under this law, though it's impossible to know the real number. Prosecutors and court clerks cannot say anything about the case aside from noting that it is now nonpublic. It doesn't show up in civilian background checks. Only law enforcement and the courts can learn of the conviction's existence.
McGinnis said these nonpublic cases made up the "lion's share" of the Detroit Police Department's domestic violence cases.
"They can still be fired (with the non-public plea) and in many cases should be," McGinnis said. "Administratively, we work with the evidence in the investigation and not what the eventual adjudication is criminally."
The News learned about Monroe's case from the Detroit Police Department during the pretrial phase, while the case was still public, in response to a public records request for a list of officers charged with domestic violence since 2015.
In Monroe's case, Oakland County Circuit Judge Nanci Grant hesitated to make his case nonpublic because of his no-contest plea, but ultimately relented. Grant questioned whether he really had taken full accountability for his actions. She sentenced him to nine months of probation and a year-long rehabilitation program.
Monroe said during his sentencing that his actions were "unbecoming for a police officer, a father, a son."
Publicly available cases
Of the 100 cases examined by The News, all were limited to publicly available information. Some of the cases were pulled from media reports, but The News also asked five of the six largest agencies in Michigan – Michigan State Police, Detroit Police, the Wayne County Sheriff's Office, the Macomb County Sheriff's Office and the Oakland County Sheriff's Office – for a list of officers charged with domestic violence, stalking, assault of a partner or sexual assault while working for the department. This yielded 74 of the 100 cases, most of which were from Detroit.
There's little research done on how often police commit domestic violence – and nearly all of it is decades old – but the existing data shows a high prevalence of abuse compared with the general population. The most frequently cited research was done at Arizona State University in 1991, before many early and mid-career officers were even born, yet its conclusion that 40% of officers have behaved violently toward their partner is still cited today.
The data that exists – while unreliable and old – also likely under-represents the extent of the problem, the University of Maryland's Goodmark said.
"That doesn't even begin to touch what's actually happening," Goodmark said. "... I have no doubt that this is a huge problem. It's just quantifying it that is challenging."
Goodmark said she gets Google alerts multiple times a week about officers being charged with domestic violence, so she knows anecdotally there are many cases. And that number just scratches the surface, she said, because most domestic violence cases never come to the public's attention or result in an arrest or prosecution. About 50% of domestic violence crimes were reported to police in 2023, according to the 2023 U.S. Department of Justice's criminal victimization report.
Johanna Kononen, director of law and police at the Michigan Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence, said it's "shockingly common" how often officers perpetrate domestic violence. While she noted there is no recent data on the issue, she said she sees it anecdotally.
"We get a lot of contact from survivors of domestic violence who are scared to report because their partner is a police officer," Kononen said. "When it is an officer-involved domestic violence allegation, at least the perception by survivors and often the public is that the police protect their own. They might get placed on administrative leave, but then it's quickly kind of glossed over."
'We charge them as we see them'
Only 32% of officers in the U.S. convicted after being charged with domestic violence lost their jobs, according to a 2013 study by Bowling Green State University criminal justice professor Philip Stinson. Stinson keeps a database of officers charged with crimes, including domestic violence.
Stinson said he found officers accused of domestic violence are often charged with lesser offenses as a "professional courtesy" so they can keep working. He found that, at times, criminal behavior described in news articles did not match the charge levied against the officer, at times describing assaultive behavior that was charged with a non-assaultive crime.
"There's preferential charging decisions, there's preferential plea bargains, there's preferential sentences," Stinson said. "You've got all these things at play that result in favorable treatment to the officer defendant that would not be granted to anybody else in the criminal court system. ... We see a lot of these cases ending in a conviction for a misdemeanor that's not an assault charge."
Macomb County Prosecutor Pete Lucido and Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said in separate interviews with The News that police officers are not treated any differently than other defendants by their offices and are not given preferential charging decisions, plea bargains or sentencing agreements.
"We charge them as we see them here in this office," Lucido said. "If a police officer commits domestic violence, it does not affect me what's going to happen with their job. ... If it's done any other way, then it's an unjust system."
McDonald said she's actually seeing the opposite of what Stinson found – that agencies in Oakland County are applying tremendous scrutiny to any possible criminal actions by officers.
"I don't want to paint this rosy picture, because the biggest challenge we face as prosecutors with domestic violence cases is the fear and reluctance that victims have, the fear that they will be in greater danger, the fear that they'll report with taking that risk and that nothing will be done about it," McDonald said. "That is absolutely heightened in a case where the perpetrator is a member of law enforcement."
Detroit Police Detective Lemuel Sims was charged four times related to arguments with girlfriends between 2011 and 2015, including domestic violence, felonious assault and disturbing the peace, according to records released by Detroit police. He was not convicted; in two of the cases, the alleged victim did not cooperate, records showed.
Sims was promoted to sergeant in 2023 despite an internal affairs finding that he had violated its policies, according to records. The internal investigation concluded Sims had mistreated people, engaged in conduct unbecoming of an officer and lied about the domestic violence investigation.
Sims, in an interview, said that while nothing came of the charges, he has gone to therapy and has not had any issues since then.
"It was in my past. I'm now married with two kids," Sims told The News. "The situation I was in, whether it (was) lies told on me or not, I've learned to deal with it. I'm looking to keep my life going and keep my career going."
McGinnis, the Detroit police commander, said prior to 2024, an officer with a domestic violence conviction could still have worked for DPD, despite these officers not being allowed to carry a firearm under federal law. After Michigan's domestic violence laws changed to mimic the language of federal law – which does not allow for anyone convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence to carry a gun – in February 2024, the department changed its disciplinary standards for domestic violence, no longer allowing them to continue to work for DPD, he said.
McGinnis said, however, he could not recall anyone who kept their job after a conviction.
'The system wasn't set up to protect us'
Renee' Harrington said she had been trying to escape her boyfriend's clutches for six months in March 1998. She had purchased a home and was waiting to close on it – until her boyfriend, Monroe County Sheriff's Office Deputy Orval Parker, found out. She said violence ensued.
Harrington said she found it ironic that she had written the domestic violence program for police and prosecutors in the county while working as an officer with the Monroe City Police Department's reserve unit, yet when she needed help, no one was there for her. Her experience with the legal system led her to become an advocate for women abused by partners in positions of authority.
"I had crossed the blue line. There was no one out there who would help me and protect me," Harrington said. "The system wasn't set up to protect us."
On that day back in March 1998, Harrington said she started to leave the home to avoid an argument, but heard Parker behind her rummaging in the dresser drawer, where she said he stored his gun.
Parker's attorney at his jury trial in 2000, William Godfroy, said the sound Harrington heard was actually Parker putting a videotape into the VCR in his bedroom, and that he had walked out with a remote control, not a gun.
But Harrington thought her life was in danger. She testified that she heard and saw Parker chamber a bullet in his gun. She believed he would kill her if she tried to run, she testified.
"I knew I could not call 911 because nobody would help me," Harrington said.
A jury later acquitted Parker of felonious assault in Monroe County in 2000, and he went back to work for the Monroe County Sheriff's Office. Parker did not respond for comment.
Harrington created the OIDV Project of Michigan blog in 2007 to try to help other victims. She, like other advocates and experts, expressed frustration that there aren't more options for victims who don't think the police will help them.
Christine Kinal, CEO and president of the HAVEN domestic violence shelter in Oakland County, said many occupations come with barriers to reporting abuse, including law enforcement. She said victims, including some police officers themselves, struggle with embarrassment and fear they won't be taken seriously.
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A lot of times, it took (the victims) years to get here because they're worried about their status and community," Kinal said. "If I report, are they going to support me? Will they cover it up and have each other's back?"
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