Sacramento law enforcement officers, prosecutors, nurses, 911 dispatchers and victim advocates will gather at the Folsom Community Center on October 15 for an annual conference aimed at closing gaps in how the region responds to domestic violence, including how investigators can spot staged crime scenes that mask homicides. The Sacramento Domestic Violence Prevention Collaboration is hosting the Annual Conference & Awards Ceremony, with sessions covering firearms relinquishment, human trafficking, and strangulation as a lethality risk. Registration costs $50 and includes a meal, with a DVPC Awards Ceremony held during lunch.
The event was announced by the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office on Facebook, which detailed the day's four main sessions and the professionals invited to attend: prosecutors, physicians, nurses, law enforcement officers, victim advocates, social workers, firefighters, paramedics and EMTs, high school administrators, counselors and coaches. One of the more sobering sessions on the agenda is titled Hidden Homicides: The Initial Response, led by presenter Rob Duncanson, Esq. That topic lines up with a relatively new piece of California law: Senate Bill 989, known as Joanna's Law, took effect on January 1, 2025, establishing 10 red-flag indicators to help law enforcement identify staged crime scenes and hidden homicides in suspicious death cases with a history of domestic abuse, according to ABC10. The law was inspired by the 2011 death of Joanna Hunter, per the same report.
Firearms Surrender and a Legal Gap Closed in 2022
Another session, Domestic Violence and Firearms Relinquishment, will be presented by Julia Weber, JD, MSW, according to the conference materials. Weber spent 17 years with the Judicial Council of California developing court protocols for protective orders and firearm surrender, and later served as implementation director for the Giffords Law Center, where she also served as co-counsel to California's Family and Juvenile Law Advisory Committee. Her session connects directly to Senate Bill 320, which took effect in 2022 and reformed civil firearm relinquishment by mandating immediate surrender of guns upon service of domestic violence restraining orders, while requiring courts to notify law enforcement immediately of non-compliance, according to the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence.
A third session, Domestic Violence & Human Trafficking: Connecting the Dots, will be led by Lt. Nate Grgich of SSD alongside Michelle Vasquez, who serves as a human trafficking coordinator, per the conference agenda. The fourth major session, Strangulation Prevention & Education: Breath Play is Death Play, will be presented by Joyce Bilyeu, CEO of the Sacramento Regional Family Justice Center, and Joshua Helton, a corporal at Davis PD.
Why Strangulation Training Matters
The strangulation session reflects a documented lethality risk that can be difficult for responders to detect. Non-fatal strangulation by an intimate partner increases a victim's odds of becoming an attempted or completed homicide victim by more than seven-fold, according to research published in the Journal of Emergency Medicine. Strangulation often leaves no external markings despite causing internal injury, the same research notes, which is part of why cross-disciplinary training for medical staff, dispatchers and officers is considered critical to catching cases that might otherwise be missed.
Bilyeu's role in the conference follows recent national recognition for Sacramento's collaborative approach. She co-presented with Sacramento County Adult Protective Services at the National Adult Protective Services Association's September 2025 conference to showcase cross-agency intervention models, according to the Sacramento County Department of Child, Family and Adult Services. The Sacramento Regional Family Justice Center, which Bilyeu leads, was established in 2016 as a multi-agency one-stop victim support facility and has recorded over 32,000 visits from survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking, elder abuse and child abuse, per background from GivingEdge.
A Collaboration Rooted in 2003
The Sacramento Domestic Violence Prevention Collaboration was co-founded in 2003 by David Cropp, a former Sacramento Police Department detective supervisor who now serves as a client services supervisor at the Sacramento Regional Family Justice Center, to unite local law enforcement, government agencies and non-profits, according to The Midnite Writer. Cropp is one of two contacts fielding registration questions for October's conference, reachable at [email protected], alongside Aracely Hurtado at [email protected], per the DA's office announcement.
The scale of the caseload driving this kind of training is significant. Sacramento County law enforcement agencies receive over 6,000 domestic violence crime reports annually, comprising roughly 3,950 fresh arrests and 2,100 warrant requests, resulting in more than 2,400 criminal prosecutions filed by the District Attorney's office, according to data compiled by the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office. Roughly 20 percent of those cases involve perpetrators fleeing before police arrive, the same data shows.
Local survivors also have crisis resources outside the conference setting. WEAVE, Inc., incorporated in 1978, is Sacramento County's primary crisis intervention provider for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, operating a 96-bed emergency safehouse shelter and a 24/7 support hotline at (916) 920-2952, according to Domestic Shelters. Separately, the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law launched a clinical externship this month with the Sacramento Regional Family Justice Center, giving law students hands-on experience helping domestic abuse survivors obtain restraining orders, per McGeorge School of Law.
The October 15 conference comes amid a stretch of local domestic violence cases that have drawn law enforcement attention across the region, including a SWAT standoff over a felony warrant earlier this month and the arrest of a man following repeated restraining order violations in Sacramento County last month. Organizers say the day-long training is meant to help the wide range of professionals who first encounter these cases, from dispatchers to school administrators, recognize warning signs earlier and coordinate more effectively across agencies.
