Denver has rolled out a countywide protocol requiring 911 dispatchers to ask every domestic-violence caller whether strangulation or choking occurred, a shift meant to catch injuries that often leave no visible mark. Under the new rules, emergency call takers will use a mandatory shorthand command, /str, whenever strangulation is reported, flagging the case for automatic escalation between the Denver City Attorney's Office and the Denver District Attorney's Office.
The protocol comes from a report released by the Denver County Strangulation Response Protocol Committee, a group that includes prosecutors, medical professionals, law enforcement representatives, and community advocacy organizations, according to Denver7. The committee's report highlighted blind spots in how officers have historically responded to strangulation reports and laid out the protocol changes meant to close them. Denver7 reporter Colette Bordelon was set to attend a press conference Tuesday morning where officials discussed the findings.
Why Invisible Injuries Get Missed
Strangulation can be easily overlooked precisely because it does not always leave visible external injuries, and the new protocol treats every reported case as high risk regardless of whether bruising is present. The committee's report found that police reports failed to identify strangulation in a significant share of cases despite describing assault characteristics and injuries consistent with it, per the report cited by Denver7. That gap matters because non-fatal strangulation precedes intimate partner murder or attempted murder in almost half of cases, and it is recognized as the second-deadliest form of assault behind gun violence.
Guidelines from the Rose Andom Center note that non-fatal strangulation occurs in 68 to 80 percent of domestic violence and sexual assault incidents, yet up to half of those cases show no visible external injuries such as bruising or neck marks. The center, described as Colorado's first Family Justice Center, brings together more than 20 community advocacy groups and government agencies under one roof in Denver to provide wraparound legal, medical, and psychological support for survivors. Separate research cited by Domestic Shelters found that survivors of non-fatal strangulation are 750 percent more likely to eventually be killed by their intimate partner than survivors who were never strangled.
New Dispatch and Prosecution Rules
Under the protocol, 911 dispatchers must now ask survivors in domestic-violence physical-altercation incidents whether they were strangled or choked, and call takers can ask whether anything was placed on or against a person's neck or face by any means. Responders are also directed to provide survivors with information about safety and health risks and to encourage medical assessment. Investigators must schedule follow-up photographs within a set number of hours to document delayed bruising that may not appear right away, per the protocol.
The Denver City Attorney's Office will review all domestic-violence cases and will staff police reports noting strangulation with the district attorney's office for consideration of an up-file to a state-charged case. Cases involving strangulation will be automatically escalated, and any rejected misdemeanor or felony filings will still be prosecuted by the city attorney's office as high-risk situations rather than dropped. Accepted cases will move to the district attorney's office for prosecution.
The Case That Shaped the Response
Officials cited the case of Marina Placensia, a 28-year-old woman who was murdered aboard an Amtrak train in 2016 while trying to escape an abusive relationship, as a driving force behind the committee's work. An expert review determined her manner of death was homicide and her cause of death was suffocation, and Hoodline previously reported on the life sentence handed down after her killer, Angelo Mantych, stood trial in 2026 and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole following a guilty verdict.
As CBS News Colorado reported, an autopsy of Placensia revealed 35 internal and external injuries, none of which appeared immediately fatal on the surface, requiring years of forensic investigation before authorities formally charged Mantych in October 2023. The case illustrates the exact evidentiary problem the new Denver protocol is designed to address: physical harm from strangulation is frequently deceptive, hidden, or delayed, even when the underlying danger is severe.
State Law Backs the Local Push
Colorado law already treats strangulation as serious. Under Colorado Revised Statutes § 18-3-203(1)(i), second-degree assault by strangulation is a Class 4 felony carrying an extraordinary risk designation, with a potential state prison sentence of two to eight years and fines up to $500,000, according to legal guidance from Bacharach Law. That statute traces back to House Bill 16-1080, which Colorado enacted in 2016 to create a standalone felony charge for non-fatal strangulation after acts lacking obvious physical trauma had previously been prosecuted only as lower-level misdemeanors, per the ACLU of Colorado.
More recently, the Colorado General Assembly passed Senate Bill 26-095 in May, requiring mandatory trauma-informed training for law enforcement personnel and enhancing legal protections for crime survivors navigating the justice system, according to Colorado House Democrats. The Colorado Attorney General's Office reported in October 2025 that domestic violence accounted for roughly 20 percent of all homicides committed across the state over the preceding year, underscoring the stakes behind Denver's local overhaul. Separately, under House Bill 21-1265, district crime victim compensation funds are used to cover the cost of medical forensic examinations for strangulation survivors so they do not face out-of-pocket bills, per the Alliance for HOPE International.
Denver's new protocol arrives amid a string of local strangulation cases that have drawn attention in recent weeks. Hoodline recently covered the arrest of a Colorado State Patrol sergeant on a felony strangulation charge in nearby Weld County, and reported separately on Denver police renewing their public plea for tips two years after an unsolved strangling death in City Park West. Taken together, the cases reflect why Denver's committee built its response around a single guiding principle: treat every strangulation report as high risk, regardless of what investigators can see.
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