WEBVTT
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Hi Warriors and welcome to One in Three.
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I'm your host, Ingrid.
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Today is October 1st and marks the official start of Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
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This year's theme, as shared by the Domestic Violence Awareness Project, is With Survivors Always.
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It's a powerful reminder that survivors deserve safety.
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Survivors deserve support.
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And survivors deserve solidarity.
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I am honored to be joined today by Captain Eric Thrillkeld, who has dedicated much of his career to advocating for domestic violence victims.
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Here's Eric.
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Hi, Eric.
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Thank you so much for joining me today.
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Of course.
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So before we get into our conversation, could you give a bit of a background of yourself so the listeners can get to know you a bit?
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Sure.
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So I've been in law enforcement for over 30 years.
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I started my career in New Mexico in a small city and that I actually, the same town I went to high school in, eventually worked my way up to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I worked for several years with the police there.
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I spent several years in Colorado Springs with the El Paso County Sheriff's Office, which is kind of where I got my really strong interest in this topic of domestic violence.
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I had an opportunity to join a specialized team there called the Domestic Violence Enhanced Response Team, which was a multidisciplined group of people handling the most lethal cases in a two-county area.
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I took that experience and went overseas with the United Nations police in 2000 with uh in Kosovo and kind of parlayed that experience with domestic violence into what I was doing there, training police uh at the police academy in Kosovo.
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And then I I uh was the director or the chief of the domestic violence program for the country.
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Um the country was broken up into five regions, and we had international police in each region who and our goal, our world goal was to train local police officers to take over.
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And went from Kosovo to Macedonia, North Macedonia, with the organization for security and cooperation in Europe, uh, where I trained uh police leaders, community leaders uh on Western standards of modern policing, a lot on community policing-oriented projects and domestic violence training as well.
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Uh eventually came back to the United States, worked for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center for a while, uh, again focusing on domestic violence.
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And now I've been with the Eddie County Sheriff's Office for about 14 years.
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Uh, started out in patrol and worked my way up to captain, all of which has been uh detective, patrol detective, sergeant, lieutenant, and captain all in the detective division.
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And we're an agency of about 80 sworn positions, and um I oversee, I'm still overseeing the detective division and um the divert program.
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I've created a helped to create a divert program here as well.
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So do all law offices have a domestic violence, like do they have domestic violence training as part of their system, or is that something that's specific and depends on how remote they are?
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So every academy has some domestic violence component to it, but it's it's woefully inadequate for doing thorough investigations.
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The average that I've seen around the country is about 16 hours of training for out of the whole academy.
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So it's it's imperative that agencies do more advanced training once officers get out of basic training, they start working in the field.
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And a lot of that comes through the the field training program of actually responding to calls.
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It's you know, trial by fire, if you will.
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Uh but I in my view, that really shouldn't be the case.
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We should be have really really well-rounded, well-trained officers uh before they actually go on the street and start responding to these calls for for various reasons.
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One, they're extremely dangerous to everybody involved, including the officers who are responding.
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Um, but it what your that initial response uh oftentimes makes or breaks if the case is going to be successful, if you're gonna save someone's life or not, uh, and and puts victims and and and offenders and children on the right or wrong path, depending on how you address it and at that from the very first call for service.
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So I'm actually I was planning on going in a different order, but uh, since you're talking about danger, a lot of people are talking about mass shootings, and that's always sort of on the top of everyone's brain.
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There's a strong link between a history of domestic violence uh and mass shootings.
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Is that correct?
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Sure.
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Um actually actually statistically, uh about over 50% of mass shootings that occurred in our country have a domestic violence nexus.
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Uh you can go back to most of them and find that your suspect is either as is either a domestic violence abuser that grew up in an abusive home and and witnessed a lot of domestic violence, um you you will see that uh it's a it's an ongoing theme.
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And if you go all the way back to the first recorded mass shooting that that we had in the United States, I believe it was 1966 at the University of Texas, uh, where the subject climbed up on a tower and started shooting students with a high-powered rifle.
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He killed his wife and and uh mother before coming to that that scene.
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So and there's plenty of other examples.
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Uh Dylan Roof uh witnessed years of abuse by his stepfather against his mother.
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Um you look at the Pulse Nightclub shooting, uh the offender in that, uh, the documented history of strangulation against his wife.
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So it there's plenty of evidence.
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Uh, and and one of the things I focus on in the training that we do with officers is if if you're be aware of that when you go into these situations, not only for mass shooting, but for suspects who strangle their their uh victims, officers are at a much higher increased risk of being hurt or killed by those suspects if they're stranglers.
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Yeah, I remember reading, and I don't know the exact uh statistics, that it was around 75 to 80 percent of officer um involved homicide where they were the the person who was killed um from a domestic violence offender who had previously strangled their intimate partner.
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Um so you had mentioned before multidisciplinary teams.
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What does that exactly mean?
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So it depends on on which context you look at it.
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Uh so you probably heard of the term um a CRC community response uh community response team, community, there's different acronyms for it, but which is sort of a multidisciplined group of people who get together on a regular basis and review sexual assault crimes and domestic violence-related crimes.
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Or maybe maybe they have separate teams and they have one for each issue.
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Uh, but you bring to the table uh the medical expertise, for example, probably have a medical doctor on that team, a prosecutor or two.
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Uh in best case scenarios, you'll have a judge or two, uh, you'll have law enforcement, you'll have um nonprofit victim advocates, for-profit, not for-profit, but uh victim advocates who are attached to law enforcement agencies or prosecution's prosecutors' offices, and uh probation and parole.
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Um anybody who has a hand in the in the making and dealing uh with domestic violence, offenders and victims in the community can be part of this group.
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And I've seen lots of different examples of how they how they function.
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Uh some of them can be very detail-oriented, some are looking at looking at things from a broader perspective.
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Um you you have some that um are doing case reviews and deciding as a group how they might best assist this the families or the people that are involved in these cases.
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They can be really effective.
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Um they're hard topic to hold together.
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Uh you've got to bring decision makers to the table in those things.
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Um, for example, uh a chief of police sending a patrol officer to those teams is it gonna be very effective?
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Because you've got to have somebody there when they're when they're talking about policy um changes, um, changes in protocols.
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It's gotta be somebody in position who can say, yes, we can do that.
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Um and it it's uh kind of like herding cats and getting all those people to the table on on a regular basis.
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And and it making those teams self-sustainable where it's not all contingent on the uh the coordinator uh to hold it all together.
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Um I've seen teams where a coordinator uh leaves for one reason or another and the the whole thing just kind of falls apart.
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But they could they can be set up and and programmed well and to to carry on no matter who's a uh who the coordinator is.
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And uh they're very effective.
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Yeah, uh another another form of a multidiscipline approach is a specialized domestic violence unit uh like would be most likely within a police organization.
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Um the one I worked in in Colorado, the the work team there was housed off-site.
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It was not housed within a police agency.
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Uh the that the leap the uh director of the program was actually a civilian position, which was unique for me.
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I'd never experienced that before.
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But um they had a lot of funding from VAWA, uh the Violence Against Women Act to pay for all of this uh the over time and the the building that we were in, and electric bill and all of that, which was great.
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Um, and the team was very effective.
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It was part of the money that the funding they had paid for, a study that was done to show that it reduced recidivism.
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Uh and but it doesn't exist anymore because the funding went away.
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And I I see that as a theme across the United States.
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It's hard to find specialized teams that just focus on domestic violence.
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They are there are some and there's some really effective ones.
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Um but what I what I tell officers is all of those people that make up those teams, they're still in our community.
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Um we may not have be all able to all work out of the same office, but we if we know who we are, for example, from a from a law enforcement perspective, if I identify a prosecutor who I know is passionate about these cases, I'm gonna do my best to make sure they get all my cases.
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And um go if I know if I know a victim advocate who's really passionate about it as well, hopefully they all are, and we're gonna reach out to them.
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Uh we're gonna have maybe have informal meetings and kind of be the squeaky wheel on these cases and making sure that they don't get lost in the system.
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And it's a problem.
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Uh we we see here uh the successful conviction on domestic violence cases in my state, it's abysmal.
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It's less than 10 percent.
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And it's you know, it's it's distressing.
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And we we tend if we're not in a if we're not all working together in a multidisciplinary approach, we there's a lot of finger pointing.
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You know, officers are pointing their fingers at the prosecutors, well, you dismiss the cases left and right, and the prosecutors are saying, well, you're not doing thorough investigations, you're not doing evidence-based investigations, and uh we can't move forward, uh, we can't find the victim, the victim's uncooperative.
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There's a there's all these uh gaps, and having a uh a team can really mitigate those.
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But it's it does take a lot of work.
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Well yeah, I imagine a victim is less likely to be found or be cooperative if they don't have faith in the system that they're actually there to advocate for them.
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So it's almost even if you got a team together, and then even if it disintegrated over time, you're still opening those lines of communication with each other, like how you mentioned you can con you know what prosecutor to look for.
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There's a big disconnect you and I had been talking about previously in education for the providers throughout like all the different um specialties and positions of receiving the education on domestic violence and actually putting it into practice.
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And you know, I'm a nurse practitioner, I'm not really in the hospital anymore to, and I I was never somebody who dealt directly with domestic violence victims, but we always had to have annual competencies just in case we did happen to come upon somebody who uh we would suspect domestic violence, but I can say that I probably was not um prepared enough to actually really pick up on those.
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Yeah, that's a good point.
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Um if I look at education on non-fatal strangulation as an example, um nurses typically don't get that training in nursing school, and doctors aren't getting it in medical school.
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So it's it's tough for if you have a detective or patrol officer who's working a strangulation case to come to a doctor in the emergency room and say, hey, uh this is what I learned.
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Uh we really need a CT scan on this.
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And doctors are like, What?
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You're trying to tell me how to do my job.
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And you're like, no, I so we have we have tools for them.
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We have uh we have some trifold cards that we educate officers, hey, this is something you can give to a physician and say, look, this is the gold standard.
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Uh not not my idea.
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This is other medical professionals who've decided this is the best way to uh give thorough exams on those kinds of cases.
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That can be really helpful.
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And so educating, bringing those people into the fold in your C in your uh response teams is essential uh to make sure they all understand.
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Paramedics is another example.
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Um they're great resources.
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Victims will tell paramedics things that they're not ever gonna say to the police, but paramedics write reports.
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But if they don't understand the signs and symptoms of strangulation, uh they may not ask the right questions.
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And often victims aren't volunteering that.
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You gotta you gotta ask.
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Right.
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And so let's talk about non-fatal strangulation for a second because those individuals don't you can't necessarily tell somebody's been strangled just based on the outward appearance.
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Right.
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Yeah, so we know about what about half the time you're gonna you're gonna have visible bruising.
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And only about 15% of the time are you gonna see bruises that are significant enough to get decent photographs that might be able to use as evidence.
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Uh so we we the absolute and and so at half the time you're not gonna see anything.
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So we've got to ask the right questions.
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We gotta we've got to know uh you know, are you having difficulty breathing?
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Uh is this person have a raspy voice, if they've got uh petichee in the eyes, blood bloodshot eyes, uh are they uh lightheaded?
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They know if they've lost consciousness or not, all of things which can really uh exacerbate the the situation.
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Uh but we've got to identify those those uh markers of strangulation, and it it takes it takes training and it takes time to ask those questions.
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There's some really good assessment tools for law enforcement and for medical providers on reminding us what questions to ask.
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Uh we it's it's one of the crimes that we really want to know, not just strangulation, but domestic violence in general.
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Asking victims, how did this make you feel?
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Because often in a strangulation case, a victim's gonna say, I thought I was gonna die.
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We don't have to do that when we go to burglary calls.
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People are telling us, I'm angry, I'm upset, someone broke into my house, I stole my stuff, I want you to put them in prison.
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Um, but on domestic violence, that's generally not the case.
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So asking people how how they feel is imperative.
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It's really also important to identify those victims because I I believe the risk of lethality following a non fatal strangulation is extremely elevated.
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I um I again I can't remember the statistics right off the top of my 750%.
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Okay, I thought it was 750% greater likelihood you're gonna later be murdered by that person.
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And that doesn't mean you're gonna be strangled in death.
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It can happen in a plethora of other ways.
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Uh it's just people who use strangulation as a form of power and control are much more likely to kill you.
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Right.
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Uh so one thing that keeps coming up that I I everything I keep reading is trauma-informed uh individuals, that you want a trauma-informed attorney, trauma-informed judge, trauma-informed law enforcement to really understand what you're going through.
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What is ex what does that exactly mean?
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Um I I guess one way to characterize it is um you've got to be, you've got to have there there are specialized training programs specifically for trauma-informed interviewing, and they're they're somewhat lengthy.
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And it uh it's probably maybe I'm being a bit optimistic to think that every officer would get a chance to go through those.
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That would be wonderful if they did.
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But there's some basic things that we can all do as far as taking time to understand that trauma affects people's memories, it affects their responses to questions and to different different stimuli that you may be experiencing.
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And domestic violence is one of those.
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Uh, if you look at uh non-fatal strangulation as an example, uh it's if you've been strangled to unconsciousness, you're gonna have gaps in your memory.
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Uh, there's no no way that you're you once you're out, you're out.
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You don't know what happened.
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Um so understanding that and understanding even if you didn't lose consciousness, that you're still going to you may suffer from memory loss, even long-term memory loss.
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And and understanding that victims who have experienced a significant trauma are not necessarily going to be your best uh victim.
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Uh they may not tell you the story in a chronological fashion, which police officers that's over trained over and over again.
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Everything's got to be chronological.
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And sometimes we try to push people into a box and make them tell their story in such a fashion.
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It's not it's not practical.
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It's it's going to ruin your your interview, it's gonna probably ruin your rapport with that victim if you're trying to do that.
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So what I what I tell officers is look, we all have body cameras.
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Most all of us do.
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Um if you don't, you've got some other kind of recording device.
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You're you can go back and refer to those recordings if need be, but let people tell their story without interrupting them.
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Let them talk tell you whatever is on their mind at that moment.
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And it may not be the strangulation, it might be uh they're upset about they need their car keys back, or what where did he take the kids, or how am I gonna pay for this?
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And um who knows?
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There uh I give you an example of a case I worked years ago where um the district attorney's office gave me a call and said, Hey, we we had a victim of uh domestic violence come in.
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She was upset because her case wasn't being prosecuted, and so we looked at the police report and we listened to what she had to say, and they don't match.
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There's lots of information that's not in the report.
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Could you please take a look at this?
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So I did, and it was a it was a report generated by my agency, and the sat down with the victim and went back uh to the beginning, and and what I realized was that um she had been strangled and nobody asked her about that.
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She didn't she didn't share that information with deputies on scene.
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She did briefly mention it to the paramedics, she never mentioned it to the doctor at the emergency room.
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And there was a witness to that strangulation who was never interviewed, her teenage daughter.
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Because when she's telling me this story, she's saying, Well, I came in and you know, he he put his arm around my throat and he was punching me and I lost consciousness, and then he drugged me across the floor and he pushed me out the back door.
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I think, well, how do you know all this stuff if you were unconscious?
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And so, oh, my daughter told me that's what happened after I lost consciousness.
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Well, she wasn't mentioned anywhere in the report.
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So we've got to interview all the witnesses because we never know what people saw or heard.
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And it's just an example where the paramedics she mentioned being choked, it was a term she'd used to the paramedics.
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They didn't they didn't pass it on to them to the doctor.
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Um, so what what I tell investigators is look, if at all possible, go to the ER with your victim, make sure that the that the ER physician knows that the strangulation occurred and encourage them to do a thorough exam, look for those signs and symptoms, or ask about the signs and symptoms and look for internal injuries because they they very well may be there, and you're not gonna be able to doctors can't see them either without specialized equipment, specialized tests.
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Um but the the back to the trauma-informed interviewing, um just not asking compound questions, keeping them simple and straightforward, letting victims tell their story all the way through without interrupting.
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And you can always go back and walk them through step by step.
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So you actually brought up something that uh I wanted to point out is a lot of times when people think of strangulation, they think of someone coming from the front of them using their hands to actually put around their neck and maybe don't even consider the arm, the I guess the sleeper holds sort of um as that is actually a form of strangulation as well.
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Sure.
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And you can uh uh ligatures are a form of strangulation, hanging is a form of strangulation.
00:22:51.920 --> 00:23:00.160
So you can use other your your arms, your knees, your legs, all kinds of things that anything you can compress someone's throat with.
00:23:00.319 --> 00:23:06.079
And and it's important to understand it doesn't it can be your fingers, it doesn't take much pressure at all.
00:23:06.319 --> 00:23:13.519
Actually, only about four and a half to five pounds of pressure to cut off the blood flow to some to a human being.
00:23:13.680 --> 00:23:20.160
And to put that in perspective, if you can open the soda can with your finger, you have enough strength to strangle someone.
00:23:20.480 --> 00:23:24.880
If you can pull the trigger on a pistol, uh you have enough strength to strangle somebody.
00:23:26.160 --> 00:23:43.680
So I mean, I know a victim's not necessarily going to be thinking of what terms to use if they're speaking to officers, but is there any are there any key words or key terms that somebody would use that would kind of raise the the red flag for an officer who's you know answering a domestic call?
00:23:44.559 --> 00:23:45.680
About strangulation?
00:23:46.160 --> 00:24:06.799
About anything that's Oh um Well looking for I think looking for signs that someone is in fear, uh looking at and but that may that can be those can be subtle clues and not not making the assumption that everyone's gonna be upset or crying or angry.
00:24:06.880 --> 00:24:12.240
Uh some some victims are gonna be appear completely calm, completely controlled.
00:24:12.480 --> 00:24:19.119
And that may be because they're they're basically immune to the process, and it's a regular occurrence for them.
00:24:19.279 --> 00:24:23.119
Um but we're all humans, we all respond differently to trauma.
00:24:23.440 --> 00:24:30.720
So we can't assume that uh I've seen officers who have well, she wasn't upset, she wasn't crying.
00:24:30.799 --> 00:24:35.359
I don't know, maybe maybe she's not being truthful, and that could be the complete opposite.
00:24:35.440 --> 00:24:36.960
So you gotta be open.
00:24:37.279 --> 00:24:58.559
Um trying to think of some other examples, but separating victims and suspects is imperative to doing thorough investigations when you know, but oftentimes these scenes are very chaotic, so you have to get things under control before you can be very effective.
00:24:59.200 --> 00:25:01.680
You gotta be you gotta have at least two officers respond.
00:25:01.839 --> 00:25:16.960
One officer is not gonna be able to do a very thorough interview because you need to separate your your people that are involved visually, also auditorily, um, but you gotta keep your partner in sight because officers have to remain safe.
00:25:17.119 --> 00:25:19.039
It's it can be quite complex.
00:25:19.440 --> 00:25:27.680
Um but so giving people a space where they feel safe enough to tell you what's going on is is imperative.
00:25:28.240 --> 00:25:43.920
Um I think and and and making sure that as I said before, all your witnesses are interviewed, and that includes children, but I'm not advocating that officers interview kids on the scene, especially younger children.
00:25:44.079 --> 00:25:47.279
Uh, that takes a specialized uh form of training.
00:25:47.440 --> 00:26:02.240
It needs to be a forensic interview, and that's where that multidisciplinary team comes into into focus, because you you're gonna have to get those kids to um uh children's advocacy center where those those interviews can be done in a safe environment.
00:26:02.400 --> 00:26:15.920
And if you start interviewing kids and locking them in on a story, uh you never know that the kids are are are very likely to want to protect one parent or the other, or maybe both, or maybe they're telling you what they think you want to hear.
00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:24.799
Uh, and if you don't have specialized training on how to ask non-meaning questions of children, you can really uh devastate a case.
00:26:25.119 --> 00:26:29.519
So get them to to uh forensic interview.
00:26:30.079 --> 00:26:40.640
That's uh actually a very good point, too, because they they can be swayed easily or remember things incorrectly if they're led uh down wrong questioning.
00:26:40.880 --> 00:26:54.640
Um one point I want to take um make is that it's it is difficult sometimes to find out who the victim versus the perpetrator is, because uh the victim can typically present as the crazy one, more emotional.
00:26:54.799 --> 00:26:58.640
And then the perpetrator can be calm and charming.
00:26:58.720 --> 00:27:11.680
And I think a very good case that a lot of us uh non-professionals were able to watch if we watched that documentary was the Gabby Petito case when um the police officers had pulled her over or pulled them over.
00:27:12.000 --> 00:27:12.319
Right.
00:27:12.559 --> 00:27:15.359
Yeah, that's a that's kind of a classic example.
00:27:15.519 --> 00:27:19.599
Um they you know, I watched most of that.
00:27:19.920 --> 00:27:42.000
Uh and it's one one thing I think one tool that we use in my agency, which I think would have all agencies ought to use, is some for some form of a lethality assessment tool, a risk assessment or danger assessment tool, where you ask a series of questions that you know positive answers to are going to raise red flags on a lethality.
00:27:42.240 --> 00:27:53.200
And I I guess well, we're never gonna know in the Gavin Petito case for sure, but if someone had asked her, have you ever been strangled or ever had something put around your throat?
00:27:53.359 --> 00:27:59.519
Uh if she had answered yes, they could have changed the whole idea of the combat investigation.
00:27:59.599 --> 00:28:04.079
Because ultimately that's what her death was ruled, homicide by strangulation.
00:28:04.720 --> 00:28:08.960
Um there was no lethality system tool done that I saw.
00:28:09.039 --> 00:28:12.960
Uh and there are lots of agencies in the country that don't have one.
00:28:13.119 --> 00:28:17.119
Uh so that that's something I would strongly advocate for.
00:28:18.240 --> 00:28:20.480
And that's something that I think is pretty easy to find.
00:28:20.559 --> 00:28:39.599
I remember I did a an episode where I did discuss a lethality tool, and I did a simple Google and I was able to find basic questions, not necessarily affiliated with a specific place, but I think it was the person who had designed the initial lethality assessment tool that I grabbed a few questions from.
00:28:40.079 --> 00:28:40.400
Right.
00:28:40.640 --> 00:28:41.119
Uh Dr.
00:28:41.200 --> 00:28:45.359
Jacqueline Campbell is one of the premier researchers in this area.
00:28:45.440 --> 00:28:51.039
And there's a couple of different danger assessments out there that she was interval in creating.
00:28:51.200 --> 00:28:57.119
The one we use, uh the Maryland model, uh assessment program, is the one we use.
00:28:57.279 --> 00:29:02.799
And I'm not advocating for anyone in particular, but that it's it's easy, it's straightforward.
