Newbie Pivot Table Confusion

Greetings,

I am refactoring a process to use pivot tables to keep my models clean and make life simpler for reporting and, so far, most everything is good. I am, however, having an issue with trying to use the pivot tables in a closure query.

I have two models:

class ThreatRisk extends Model
{

 public function actions()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany('App\ThreatRiskDataAction')->withPivot('name', 'date')->withTimestamps();
    }
}

class ThreatRiskDataAction extends Model
{
   
    public function threats()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany('App\ThreatRisk')->withTimestamps();
    }
}

Here is my pivot migration. As you can see I am passing additional columns with the pivot for ease of use.

Schema::create('threat_risk_threat_risk_data_action', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->bigIncrements('id');
            $table->unsignedBigInteger('threat_risk_id');
            $table->unsignedBigInteger('threat_risk_data_action_id');
            $table->text('name');
            $table->text('date');
            $table->timestamps();
        });

Here is the data table for the data actions

ThreatRiskDataAction Table

id	name	created_at	updated_at
1	Informed Student of Infraction	2020-11-18 08:35:50.247	2020-11-18 08:35:50.247
2	Bullying Investigation	2020-11-18 08:36:02.840	2020-11-18 08:36:02.840
3	Notified Student's Parents	2020-11-18 08:36:31.677	2020-11-18 08:36:31.677
4	Contacted Police	2020-11-18 08:36:49.327	2020-11-18 08:36:49.327
5	Notified Special Education	2020-11-18 08:37:01.177	2020-11-18 08:37:01.177
6	Person(s) Notified	2020-11-18 08:37:12.717	2020-11-18 08:37:12.717
7	Notified Victim(s) & Their Parents	2020-11-18 08:37:28.377	2020-11-18 08:37:28.377

I am trying to return all records that use the data action of Contacted Police. I have the following, which works, but I have a feeling that I should not have to pass in the threat_risk_data_action_id into the query. It seems like I should be able to use the name of the data action instead of the id :

$case5 = ThreatRisk::whereBetween('report_date', [$start, $end])
            ->where(function ($query) {
                $query->whereHas('actions', function ($query){
                    $query->where('threat_risk_data_action_id', 4);
                });
             
            })
            ->count();

Thanks for your assistance and grace.