Domestic violence deaths in Colorado spiked to a record high in 2022 for the second year in a row, according to a report published Monday by the state’s Domestic Violence Fatality Review Board.
Ninety-four people died in domestic violence incidents in Colorado in 2022, the highest number recorded since the state began tracking the deaths in 2016, according to the 75-page report.
That count includes victims, perpetrators and bystanders, and shows a large increase in the number of bystanders killed in domestic violence incidents last year.
Colorado saw 92 domestic violence deaths in 2021, compared to 63 in 2020, 70 in 2019, 43 in 2018, 40 in 2017 and 58 in 2016, according to the report.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who chairs the fatality review board, said Friday that authorities aren’t sure whether fatalities are high because the state is doing a better job identifying and tracking domestic violence deaths, or because of an actual rise in domestic violence.
But he said either way, seeing such high numbers for two straight years is sobering.
“The number of fatalities really just scratches the surface for those who are adjacent to or close to domestic violence,” Weiser said. “By the time we get to a domestic violence fatality, there is so much harm, pain, suffering and loss, that the numbers here are really understating the impact by orders of magnitude.”
When the state saw a then-record high number of domestic violence deaths in 2021 — with 92 — advocates at the time suggested the 44% year-over-year increase was due to diminished help for domestic violence victims during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Soledad Diaz, public policy director at Violence Free Colorado, said advocates are now seeing an uptick in the severity of domestic violence cases, with worsening violence within cases.
“I do think in some ways this might be a residual effect of the pandemic,” she said of the high fatalities, “but in other ways, we have seen an increase in the violence of domestic violence cases. That is a trend that I don’t think is necessarily tied to the pandemic.”
The high fatalities in 2022 might also be attributed to the state’s poor mental health care, a lack of resources for victims early on in the cycle of domestic violence, or to the wide availability of guns, Weiser said.
“There are two broad explanations to look at: there’s more violence happening for different reasons, or we’re getting better at assessing domestic-violence-related fatalities,” he said.
Diaz said community-based organizations working to prevent domestic violence need more funding, and that the money provided by the state for such programs is just enough “to keep the doors open.”
“We don’t have enough resources to make the programs grow, or invest in prevention,” she said.
In 2022, the state saw a particularly high number of “collateral deaths,” that is, people who died in the context of a domestic violence relationship who were not the direct victims or perpetrators — including people like neighbors, children, police officers and friends.
Twenty-two of the 94 people who died in domestic violence incidents in 2022 were collateral victims, including six children, the report found. That means a full 23% of domestic violence incidents included a collateral victim in 2022, a significant increase from past years. In 2021,15% of cases involved a collateral victim, compared to 6% of cases in 2020 and 5% in 2019.
“This extraordinary increase in the last two years is deeply concerning and emphasizes that the lethal threat often extends beyond the DV victims (and perpetrators),” the report states.
Those collateral deaths include two Colorado police officers who were killed while responding to domestic violence calls, Weiser said. They were the only two police officers killed in the state in 2022, he added.
Training law enforcement to better recognize and handle domestic violence situations by using risk assessment tools early on, before they escalate into full-fledged violence, would help both victims and police, he said.
“The more law enforcement is trained on how to approach domestic violence situations that are earlier in the process or less immediately life-threatening, the more likely we can protect victims effectively and prevent law enforcement from being in those situations where it has fully escalated,” Weiser said.
Aside from the 22 collateral victims, the 94 deaths include 39 victims and 33 perpetrators of domestic violence across 62 separate incidents. Most of the people killed — 86% — were shot to death, according to the report.
The review board made several recommendations for reducing domestic violence deaths in the state, including increasing the use of risk assessment tools, using the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to enforce court orders around gun relinquishment, and increasing statewide collaboration between agencies that track and monitor domestic violence deaths.
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