Teddy McCullough's grandmother made eight calls to police in a single year. Eight welfare checks. Eight times an officer came to the door, took her daughter at her word, and left.
"My grandma had eight welfare checks done in a one year period," McCullough told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday. "Each were a chance for someone to step in. And a lethality assessment might have changed the outcome on any one of those eight checks. My mom shouldn't have had to wait until her child was thrown across a room to find a way out."
McCullough, an enrolled citizen of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians and co-founder of the Colorado Inter Tribal Policy Alliance, was one of more than two dozen witnesses who turned a Senate committee room into something rarer and rawer than a policy hearing. It was, for stretches, a reckoning.
By the end of the afternoon, HB 26-1009 — the Colorado Mandatory Lethality Assessment Act — had cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on a 6-1 vote, moving next to the Appropriations Committee with a favorable recommendation. But the single dissenting vote, and the hours of conflict that preceded it, made clear that the bill's path to law is far from settled.
What the Bill Would Do
The concept behind HB 26-1009 is straightforward: when a peace officer responds to a domestic violence call and a victim is identified as high risk, the officer must immediately connect that victim to a community-based domestic violence advocate — by phone or in person. The assessment itself uses eleven research-based questions to gauge lethality risk, capturing escalating behaviors that go beyond visible injury.
The bill's timeline is deliberate. The Attorney General's office, working with a Colorado-based domestic violence coalition, would develop mandatory officer training available no later than July 1, 2027. Mandatory reporting begins January 2028. By 2030, the Domestic Violence Fatality Review Board would evaluate the law's impact and report findings to the legislature.
Colorado is not starting from scratch. As co-prime sponsor Senator Rod Pelton noted in his opening, 44 law enforcement agencies across the state's 64 counties were already using the lethality assessment process as of September 2025, conducting 654 screenings in 2024 — more than half of which identified a victim as high danger. But the bill's mandate would extend that framework statewide, and its specific requirement for community-based advocates rather than the law enforcement-employed advocates already working many of those scenes is precisely where the afternoon's conflict erupted.
The urgency behind the push isn't abstract. Senator Pelton cited figures from the Colorado Domestic Violence Fatality Review showing 58 domestic violence deaths in Colorado in 2023, rising to 74 in 2024 — a 24% increase in a single year. Senator Katie Wallace, the bill's other co-prime sponsor, put the stakes simply: "A survivor's access to strong support should not be determined by their zip code."
The Fight Over 'Community'
For law enforcement victim advocates who packed the hearing in opposition or in an amend position, the argument was not with the lethality assessment itself. It was with a single word.
Andrea Bradbury, a graduate of the FBI Victim Assistance Academy and a member of the Domestic Violence Offender Management Board, told the committee that a language change made after the bill's introduction — inserting the word "community" before "victim advocate" — had quietly transformed the bill's meaning. Under the revised language, law enforcement agencies that already have in-house victim assistance units would be bypassed entirely at the moment of highest crisis.
Jennifer Roger Flynn, the Victim Services Coordinator for the Lone Tree Police Department with over 20 years in the field, put a finer point on it. The bill as written, she argued, "bypasses existing law enforcement based advocacy programs and may duplicate service, extend call times, overwhelm victims with multiple contacts during an already traumatic chaotic event."
Her agency's model — where system-based advocates coordinate with community partners after the initial response, with victim consent — already exists and already works, she said. The Douglas County approach, she noted, had been revised in 2019 specifically because victims were being overwhelmed by multiple contacts.
Drew Hogan, a domestic violence survivor and 21-year advocacy professional, delivered the sharpest critique of the afternoon. "This bill really acts in opposition of its own intent," he said. "It actually acts like the perpetrator in the crime, forcing the victim into situations where they have no control over things."
Hogan argued that requiring a community-based advocate on the call forces a survivor — already in survival mode, already incapable of complex decision-making — to retell their story to a stranger they never asked to be there. That, he said, is not trauma-informed care. He characterized the bill's core problem as "a misallocation of safety accountability."
The Case for Confidentiality
Supporters of the bill had a ready answer, and Committee Chair Senator Mike Weissman helped lay the legal architecture bare.
Weissman walked the committee through Colorado Revised Statute 13-90-107(1)(k)(II) — a provision in the state's evidence code establishing that community-based domestic violence advocates cannot be called to testify in court without the consent of the person they spoke with. That protection, he noted, explicitly does not extend to advocates employed by law enforcement agencies. If a law enforcement advocate is subpoenaed, they can be made to testify.
David Carnes of Violence Free Colorado, the state's anti-domestic violence coalition, confirmed the architecture directly: community-based advocates carry confidentiality protections "second to almost none," and last session's changes had further removed community-based advocates as mandated reporters. Carnes also directly rebutted concerns about victim autonomy, stating that the survivor can decline the assessment at the beginning, can stop at any time, and can decide not to participate in the phone call.
Wallace pressed the point in her closing remarks. "Those advocates don't have to testify in court and do not have an agenda beyond serving the survivor, whatever that looks like for the survivor at the time."
For survivors who distrust the criminal legal system — particularly communities of color, Native communities, and undocumented residents — that distinction is not procedural. It can be the difference between speaking honestly about their situation and staying silent.
Regina Downing, Training Program Director at Violence Free Colorado and herself a survivor, told the committee that a community-based advocate is often "the only person a survivor can speak to freely without judgment, pressure or fear of consequences."
'In Boulder County, No DV Fatalities in 2025'
The bill's most powerful evidence came from the 20th Judicial District — Boulder County — where the lethality assessment protocol has been standard practice for years.
Heather Marcy, Executive Director of the Safe House Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence in Boulder, offered a data point that landed visibly in the committee room: Boulder County has 100% participation in the lethality assessment protocol and had no domestic violence fatalities in 2025.
Courtney Sutton, Public Policy Director for the Colorado Organization for Victim Assistance, cited research findings that proper implementation of the lethality assessment protocol — including the connection to a community advocate — is associated with a 35 to 45% reduction in intimate partner homicide.
Sutton also offered her own story: a survivor of a beating that left her with a TBI and PTSD, held against her will for days before escaping. "Looking at the assessment, the only questions I would have answered no to are 8 through 10," she said. "I believe that this assessment and early intervention for victims will save many lives."
Angela Rodriguez described six years of physical and sexual abuse by a former spouse, including an incident in which officers conducted an assessment, identified her as high risk — and then let him go for the night. He came back. "Had this bill been in place," she told the committee, "he would have been charged and arrested."
The Lone No Vote — and What It Revealed
Senator Lynda Zamora Wilson cast the sole dissenting vote, but her concerns went beyond the community-versus-system-advocate debate.
She pressed Wallace on what happens when law enforcement simply doesn't comply. "What are their consequences?" she asked directly.
Wallace acknowledged she was "not sure about like a consequence to that particular law enforcement officer." Weissman stepped in to note that the bill's non-liability language encompasses "deciding whether to administer" the assessment — effectively signaling the bill is aimed at establishing best practices, not imposing sanctions.
Zamora Wilson also questioned why agencies not currently doing assessments aren't doing them, and whether incentives might work better than mandates. She noted the absence of law enforcement testimony during the hearing.
Wallace responded that the Fraternal Order of Police, the county sheriffs, and the Colorado District Attorneys Council are in support. Chiefs of police, she acknowledged, were in an amend position.
A second unresolved tension surfaced when Weissman flagged language on page 3 of the re-engrossed bill allowing officers to skip the assessment "if circumstances otherwise make the administration impossible or impracticable." He worried the clause could "be construed in too broad of a way going downstream." Wallace acknowledged she didn't "have a great answer" and suggested the training process might address it.
Senator John Carson, while voting yes, flagged an amendment proposed by Lone Tree — allowing officers to connect survivors with either a law enforcement-employed advocate or a community-based advocate — as something worth revisiting when the bill reaches the Senate floor.
Cold Cases and a Parole Board Confirmation
The committee also dispatched two other items without controversy.
HB 26-1185, the Cold Case Task Force Sunset Extension, passed 7-0 and was placed on the consent calendar for the full Senate. The bill extends the Cold Case Task Force within state government until September 1, 2039, per a recommendation from the Department of Regulatory Agencies, and also changes the type of sunset review performed and gives the executive director the ability to appoint additional members based on emerging technologies and evidentiary practices. Monica Snowbird, testifying in support, noted that the cold case database currently holds 1,965 cases — more than 1,300 of them homicides — with Denver accounting for nearly half. Andrew Simpkins, testifying on behalf of the MMIR Task Force of Colorado, said the task force is currently tracking approximately 50 unsolved homicides and missing relatives in the state. The bill carries no cost to the state.
The committee also unanimously confirmed the reappointment of Tiffany Pelham Webb to the Juvenile Parole Board, where she has served since 2024 and was recently elected Vice Chair. Asked by Weissman what she hopes to see in a young person seeking a favorable parole disposition, Pelham Webb said victim empathy is "a really big one," alongside evidence the youth has used their time productively, worked on services, and "is ready to reenter society with hope and really strong plans for the future."
What Happens Next
HB 26-1009 now moves to the Senate Appropriations Committee, which will evaluate its fiscal impact before any vote on the Senate floor. If it clears Appropriations and passes the full Senate, it would return to the House — which has already passed it — only if the Senate amends it. If it passes the Senate without amendments, it goes directly to the governor.
Senator Carson has signaled he may attempt an amendment on the Senate floor to allow officers to contact either a community-based or a law enforcement-employed advocate when a victim screens as high risk — a change that could reshape the bill's core framework.
If the bill becomes law without that change, Colorado's law enforcement agencies would be required to conduct standardized lethality assessments and connect high-risk survivors directly to confidential community-based advocates — with mandatory training in place by July 2027 and statewide reporting beginning January 2028. If it dies, or is significantly amended, the counties where no lethality assessment protocol currently exists will remain without one — and in a state where domestic violence deaths rose 24% in a single year, the next eight welfare checks may go the same way as the last.