Guest column: Gallatin County should adopt a strangulation checklist
This guest column by Gallatin County Attorney Audrey Cromwell, Haven Executive Director Katie Madison, and Stacy Wesen of Gallatin County Victim Services appeared in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle on July 29.
A recent local case involving intimate-partner strangulation is a stark reminder of how quickly this type of violence can become lethal. We’re calling on all of our partners in Gallatin County to take the next step in strengthening our collective response to this crime: Let’s adopt and use a countywide strangulation protocol that includes a proven checklist to help every responder—dispatch, law enforcement, health care, advocacy and prosecution—recognize the danger, document accurate information and complete critical steps in their role.
When a survivor reports strangulation, every question asked, symptom recorded, and piece of information passed forward matters.
Strangulation is one of the deadliest forms of intimate partner violence. Designated a stand-alone crime in Montana in 2017, strangulation is the single-highest predictor of homicide for women experiencing abuse. Those who’ve survived one strangulation incident are 750% more likely to be murdered by that partner in the future, a figure that increases to 1,100% if the abuser has access to firearms.
Abusers who strangle partners are also dangerous to law enforcement. A 2013 study of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty over a 20-year period showed that half of those officers were killed by a suspect with a history of strangling women in a previous relationship.
Though a critical red flag, strangulation’s dangers are widely misunderstood, making it one of the most difficult crimes to investigate and prosecute. Just half of survivors will exhibit visible injuries, and days later, even those injuries may disappear, though the underlying trauma can carry lasting impacts. Survivors also often live in a situation of fear, coercive patterns, and concern for children or pets, and they frequently recant their original testimony, meaning that our legal system must build cases that don’t rest solely on a survivor’s testimony.
Checklists can help everyone build a strong case.
Many highly skilled professionals use checklists to ensure safety, including airline pilots. Not because they lack training, but because complex, high-stakes work leaves little room for missed steps. Surgeon and medical writer Atul Gawande found the same in emergency medicine: Short checklists helped intensive-care teams more consistently complete basic infection-prevention steps they already knew, sharply reducing preventable harm.
A countywide strangulation checklist works the same way. It creates clarity and consistency, from the first 911 call through investigation, medical care and prosecution.
In adopting a checklist, Gallatin County wouldn’t be starting from scratch. In 2022, Missoula County adopted a countywide strangulation response to give agencies a straightforward path for responding to a crime that has long been minimized. And locally, our county’s Domestic Violence Response Team has strengthened the community response in the past year: Haven brought a nationally recognized expert to train law enforcement, prosecutors, victim services staff, probation and parole officers, and advocates. The county attorney’s office has partnered with a Bozeman physician to review every strangulation case under prosecution and to provide expert testimony when appropriate.
The strangulation checklist is the logical next step: a practical way to turn that training, coordination, and expertise into an effective response every time.
A woman’s life may depend on what happens after she dials 911. A countywide strangulation checklist will help ensure Gallatin County recognizes the danger and responds with the urgency it demands.