Two Colorado lawmakers said that the legislature should consider implementing statewide standards for law enforcement on tracking domestic violence calls in the wake of a Denver7 investigation.

Denver7 spent months on requesting and analyzing records from more than a dozen law enforcement agencies, large and small, across Colorado, seeking to calculate arrest rates on calls of domestic violence and domestic unrest.

The state’s domestic violence law made it compulsory that an arrest when probable cause demonstrates a crime has been committed. The key phrase, “probable cause,” provides officers discretion to walk away from a domestic call without arresting anyone if there is no physical evidence or eyewitness statements to corroborate allegations of abuse.

The results of Denver7’s records requests brought the light that the agencies follow records in many different ways and some departments do not prioritize tracking their arrest rates in domestic violence cases, even as violent incidents cost as many as 40 lives across the state over the past two years.

By Prakriti Neogi