Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill says Utah police agencies still don't follow one consistent process when they respond to domestic violence calls, and he wants that to change. Gill is pushing for a uniform crime-scene investigation protocol statewide, arguing it would strengthen prosecutions even in cases where victims stop cooperating with law enforcement.
Gill said officers in Utah don't have a uniform protocol for handling crime scenes immediately after responding to domestic violence calls, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. He's urging police statewide to adopt a uniform process, saying stronger, more consistent crime-scene work could lead to stronger cases against alleged abusers even if accusers later decide to stop cooperating with investigators. Over the past five years, the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office has screened about 24,000 domestic violence-related cases and filed charges in more than 15,000 of them, per KSL.
Gill's office has already taken steps toward closing that gap using a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, the station's report notes. Part of that funding brought in Unified Police Sgt. Rob Scott to serve as a liaison between prosecutors and police, an effort meant to bridge the gap between how cases are investigated and how they're ultimately charged.
A Statewide Screening Tool With Troubling Numbers
Utah's push for more consistency isn't limited to crime-scene work. State law requires police agencies to conduct a standardized lethality assessment when responding to domestic violence-related calls, a protocol built around questions meant to identify the potential for deadly violence and trigger an immediate referral for victim services, according to the same account from the Utah News Dispatch.
The figures coming out of that screening effort vary depending on the source and time period. Utah News Dispatch reported that of the more than 23,000 assessments conducted since the protocol became statewide law in July 2023, 63% revealed the potential for lethal violence. The Salt Lake Tribune, citing the same 23,000 interviews performed from July 2023 to July 2025, put the figure at more than 60% facing what officials called a potentially lethal risk. An earlier KSL report on Utah's interactive database cited about 23,000 Lethality Assessment Protocols conducted, with 60% showing victims at high risk. A separate Deseret News report covering an earlier window, from July 1, 2023 through May 31, 2024, found 144 agencies submitted 10,189 assessments, with 63% assessed as potentially lethal.
That same Deseret News report found that 85% of referrals service providers received were for people who had never accessed services before the lethality screening, and officials described roughly a 70% to 80% statewide increase in screenings and referrals after the program took effect. A 2023 bill, H.B. 43, created a time-limited Domestic Violence Data Task Force to assess the landscape of the state's domestic violence data, including lethality assessments and protective orders, according to a Utah Office of the Attorney General report.
Dashboard Aims to Fill Information Gaps
The Utah Department of Public Safety unveiled an online dashboard in August 2025 containing data from two years of domestic violence assessments, with officials saying the data would be updated monthly, the Tribune reported. The rollout came as officials pointed to troubling context around rural violence: homicides in rural communities are three times as likely to involve an intimate partner than homicides in large cities, according to the Utah Domestic Violence Coalition, as cited in the same report.
Nationally, lethality assessment programs are designed to help first responders identify intimate-partner-violence victims at the greatest risk of being killed, according to the National Institute of Justice. Other states have adopted similar models; New Hampshire's Attorney General's Office, for instance, has adopted the Maryland Lethality Assessment Program and strongly recommends its use, according to the New Hampshire Department of Justice.
What Happens After a Protective Order Is Issued
Separately from the lethality-assessment data, Utah's court system has its own process for tracking protective orders once they're granted. After a final protective order is issued, the court clerk updates the information in the Statewide Domestic Violence Network so it can be accessed by all law enforcement agencies, according to Utah Courts.
Gill has also called on Utah lawmakers to establish a uniform statewide system for investigating domestic violence crimes, framing it as part of a broader community effort needed to prevent abuse and stop repeat offenders. He has said domestic violence is poorly reported and often underreported, and that a baseline domestic violence investigation standard is the next step he wants to see adopted statewide.
