‘There’s a lot to do’ — Utah launches domestic violence dashboard, Rep. Wilcox calls for assessment protocol for perpetrators

WEST JORDAN, Utah (ABC4) — After launching an interactive dashboard to risk assessment of domestic violence cases, one Utah lawmaker is discussing what needs to come next to prevent tragedies like what happened in Tremonton on Sunday.

Today, the Utah Department of Public Safey (DPS) launched Utah’s new interactive dashboard for Intimate Partner Domestic Violence Lethality Assessment Protocol.

Domestic violence is always an important issue facing Utahns, but it’s been a particularly prevalent topic this week following the death of two Tremonton Garland Police Officers as they responded to a domestic violence call late Sunday night.

This dashboard comes as a result of Senate Bill 117, which passed in 2023. It established the Utah Intimate Partner Lethality Assessment Protocol (LAP), a tool to help law enforcement officers identify victims who are most at risk of being killed by an intimate partner.

Representative Ryan Wilcox (R-7), who sponsored the bill, explained that lethality assessment is a proven method. It takes the form of a series of questions that officers ask the victim in a domestic violence situation. He said that depending on the answers to the questions, it gives a good indication of the risk of lethality, or what might happen to the victim if they go back into that situation without getting help.

Because of this protocol, over the past two years, “We’ve jumped dramatically in our referrals to domestic violence services,” he said. “We have a lot more need than we recognized that we had at the time, and we’ve saved a lot of people as a result.”

Over 23,000 LAPs have been conducted since the law went into effect, and more than 60% of them identified a potentially lethal risk to the victim.

According to a press release from DPS, the dashboard provides information in real-time to law enforcement, policymakers, and victim service providers. It connects victims to resources at the scene, and it gives officers information that will help them make safer and more informed decisions when dealing with domestic violence.

Wilcox said that the dashboard adds “sunlight — Additional information for all of us, for the media, for the people, for policymakers, certainly, to understand that the number of times the protocol was used, to understand where it was used, what the outcomes were, and where they took place in a given community.”

The dashboard goes hand in hand with the larger Public Safety Data Portal, Wilcox said, which focuses on a larger picture of crime. “We’re now going to have that information just available to all of us to help us understand where to focus our limited resources,” he said.

In the wake of Tremonton, what’s next?

Wilcox also discussed the case in Tremonton, where Sgt. Lee Sorensen and Officer Eric Estrada lost their lives, and another deputy was injured alongside his K-9. The suspect in that case had a history of domestic violence.

“We had him,” Wilcox said. “We had him two years ago. We had him; we issued the LAP protocol. We knew that she was at risk, and we conveyed that, and at the time, you could say we may have even saved her that day — I hope. We knew that she was still with us. We still lost two officers and almost two more, because we didn’t have that other end yet.”

Wilcox continued, “Now that we’ve figured this out a little bit, on the victim’s side, we need to make sure, as the Lt. Governor mentioned today, that we’re recognizing how important it is on the perpetrator’s side, on the person that finds themselves in a situation where they’re extremely violent with those they claim to love. We have to work on healing that too if we’re really going to solve this, if we’re really going to make the impact that we want to make.”

He said that policymakers have learned a lot about how to combat domestic violence, and he thanked Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson for her passion on the topic, but he added, “There’s a lot to do.”

One major next step in building on the LAP that lawmakers are considering is to create a similar protocol for dealing with the perpetrator of abuse. Wilcox said that the shooting in Tremonton highlighted the need for change.

Domestic violence does not only impact the immediate victim, Wilcox said, “That’s bad enough, but we’re losing our best and brightest who show up, for no reason, with these cases too.”

While the LAP has made a huge difference for victims, Wilcox said that it is time to focus on perpetrators as well to close the remaining gap. He said that from what he’s seen, the Tremonton officers responded appropriately, and it’s time for the state to do more to proactively protect officers in similar situations.