A very odd question I just thought of...LEO divorce rates

[Penta]

Okay...Rather than ask something totally substantive, I'm going to let the first question I ask be something of a "Wha?" question, a question where I want to check what I've heard against people with reality to look at. I don't know if "Ask a cop" is the best forum for this, but I'll post it here (it seems like the best fit anyway).

Namely, another thread in the "ask a cop" forum asks why cops get divorced more often than the average. I'm not silly, I'm not going to ask why.

Instead, I'm going to ask a different question: What the heck are the stats, anyway?

I've always heard that LEOs divorce at higher rates, but I've never actually seen stats that say that. When I have, it's some absurd number that makes no sense on the face of it (I think I saw one column say that "75% of police officer marriages end in divorce", but I can't recall where - that just sounds insane, even with the often-waved-about stat that 50% of all marriages end in divorce (within the first 5 years, I think) in recent years).

So let me ask, because in one of my stories/writing exercises, a LEO character is going to muse about relationship matters now that he's out of the police academy and on the street doing patrol, and I already know myself as a writer well enough to know that he would think about the likelihood of any relationship actually working with him as a police officer (as I would). (No, I don't write for pay - so you don't need to worry you're being taken advantage of by some novelist or screenwriter...I just ask questions to which I can't find an answer despite persistent google searching, though that may be me being bad at Google searches...)

To wit:

Has anybody heard recent (within the last 5 years, to clarify) stats on LEO marriages and divorce, say at a seminar or something? I like stats with a source and a link best, but so long as you can source your numbers, I'd be happy (because it'd be better than what I've found).

Alternatively, has anyone ever seen it the case that there's actually something unique to LEO relationships that makes them divorce-bait? Every factor I can think of is shared by other lines of work that don't have the same reputation as relationship-killers.

[Safety Steve]

I have never heard or seen any either Penta. I would make the assumption that our divorce rate is the same as any other profession (Doctors, Lawyers, Business peoples, etc........). I have not seen numbers, but have heard also that Doctors and Lawyers have high divorce rates.

I have been in LE for over 16 years and married to my wife almost 19 years.



Be Safe.