Chief sees a link between police shootings and a lethal form of domestic abuse

SALT LAKE CITY — Police in Utah are well aware that someone who survives being strangled by a partner is at greater risk of being killed later on: When officers respond to calls of domestic violence, they gauge a victim’s level of danger, in part by asking about any history of assault by choking.

But the risks of strangulation attempts don’t stay confined inside abusive homes, some law enforcers say.  They also extend to police officers themselves, according to Craig Kingsbury, a retired Idaho chief of police who led departments in Nampa and Twin Falls.

When police on duty are attacked and either seriously wounded or killed, Kingsbury said, “oftentimes, what you find out when you do the research is that the perpetrators had a history of some sort of extreme intimate partner violence, and most often strangulation.”

Kingsbury noted that prosecutors also see this as the case in Utah, as Ryan Michael Bate, 32, is accused of shooting and killing two Tremonton police officers on Sunday. Bate’s facing renewed charges of domestic violence after a woman reported last year that he grabbed her by the throat and threw her on a couch. Officers wrote in a report that they observed red marks on her neck.

With the help of a student research team from Boise State University, Kingsbury investigated the link between strangulation attempts and police shootings 20 years ago. He was motivated to do so, he told KSL, after one of his officers in Nampa was shot by a suspect with a history of domestic violence.

Kingsbury and a research team looked at 10 suspects in attacks on police, finding 80% had prior domestic violence history and 30% had attempted to strangle a partner in the past.

“Whether they were charged with that crime or not is irrelevant,” he said. “It’s that if you start looking at that person’s background, you will find an allegation of strangulation in a prior police report or even interviewing their past partners.”

Utah’s had past examples, too. In 2021, a Sandy police officer was shot and injured by a suspect charged four years earlier with choking a woman “for 45 seconds to a minute and she thought she was going to pass out and die,” court records state.

Prosecutors later dropped that charge when they were unable to locate the victim. The outcome that doesn’t surprise Kingsbury.

“They’re not easy cases to prosecute most often, because you do have victims that recant for a variety of reasons,” he told KSL. 

Kingsbury said despite the difficulty, he believes police need to gather all the facts. When they do so, their thorough investigations help the justice system hold offenders accountable and provide them rehabilitation services in prisons and jails.

Doing so will help keep safe not just survivors of domestic violence and members of the public, Kingsbury said, but also the police officers charged with protecting them.

“The number one takeaway that I hope that our peace officers have from this is to conduct a very good investigation when you respond to a domestic violence call,” Kingsbury said.