Connecticut subcommittee moves to require lethality screening, to formalize warrant and firearms compliance steps

A Judiciary subcommittee meeting in Enfield advanced changes to the state model policy for law-enforcement response to domestic violence that would make lethality assessment screening mandatory and formalize procedures for expediting arrest warrants and investigating failures to surrender firearms after protective orders.

The changes approved by the subcommittee would replace voluntary language in the model policy with a requirement that “officers investigating domestic violence cases shall conduct lethality assessment” when listed risk factors are present, and that officers follow corresponding protocols based on screening results, Karen Foley O’Connor, CEO of the Network Against Domestic Abuse, said during the meeting.

The revisions, which the group packaged for full-council consideration, are intended to convert longstanding practice into a post-mandated minimum standard so that all Connecticut law-enforcement agencies follow the same procedures, Chief Alaric Fox of the Enfield Police Department said. “This not only codifies this as more than a best practice, it moves it into the mandate,” Fox said.

Why it matters: The lethality assessment protocol (LAP) is used by officers to identify victims at greatest risk of homicide or severe injury and to direct victims to safety planning and services. Subcommittee members said the tool has been widely used across Connecticut and the change aims to prevent lapses where some agencies or individual officers might stop using the protocol if it remained voluntary.

Key provisions and discussion

Lethality assessment: The model-policy language replaces prior voluntary phrasing with an explicit “shall” directing officers to conduct the lethality assessment when one or more enumerated risk factors are present, and requires following the protocol tied to screening results. Karen Foley O’Connor said the wording was drawn from the LAP sheet itself and that the policy points officers to required training resources.

Arrest-warrant handling: The draft strengthens language requiring officers to “expedite” arrest-warrant execution in cases involving weapons or threats and encourages investigators to contact the state’s attorney’s office to seek faster review and judicial action. The subcommittee recommended routing the arrest-warrant wording to the arrest-warrant subcommittee for closer review before full-council consideration.

Firearms surrender and compliance: The proposed policy memorializes an existing operational protocol for tracking and investigating compliance when a person subject to an order is required to surrender firearms. The language draws on a memorandum of understanding (MOU) used when Connecticut’s compliance window shortened from two business days to 24 hours (MOU dated February 2016) and directs law enforcement to investigate noncompliance upon receiving a notice from the State Police licensing/firearms unit. Sergeant Brianna Morris and others assisted with statutory cross-references in the draft, and the revision removes an outdated federal-law citation changed in 2023.

Victim notification and contact: The policy continues to require that, after an arrest or service of a warrant, investigators attempt to notify victims and provide contact information, explain that an offender “may be released shortly after arrest” if held on bond, and encourage victims to call for updates. Subcommittee members discussed whether officers should also re-notify victims about available safety-planning resources at the time of notification and concluded current officer obligations (victim rights cards and domestic-violence forms) generally address that need.

Votes and next steps

- Approval of minutes: The subcommittee approved the minutes from the Feb. 25 meeting (motion by Nancy Tyler; second notated). The motion passed.

- LAP and related supervisor language: The committee voted to move the LAP language (pages 7–8 of the model policy) and a small supervisor-language edit on page 9 forward to the full council for consideration. The motion to approve those two items passed by voice/show of hands (mover recorded during the meeting).

- Referral to arrest-warrant subcommittee: The subcommittee voted to refer the proposed arrest-warrant processing language (pages 12–13) and the firearms-compliance text (page 22) to the arrest-warrant subcommittee for detailed review and then onward to the full council. The referral motion passed with one abstention (Johanna Canning).

What the subcommittee members said

Karen Foley O’Connor said the change replaces language that had framed LAP participation as voluntary and instead sets a statewide minimum standard administered through POST. “We put that word ‘shall’ — conduct a lethality assessment when one or more of the following exist,” she said.

Chief Alaric Fox described the shift as aligning formal policy with established practice and POST authority. “By getting rid of the red and adopting the blue, all police departments across the state will be bound by this as a POST mandate,” he said.

Attorney Johanna Canning asked for time to run parts of the arrest-warrant and firearms language past her supervisors before a vote and ultimately abstained from the referral vote.

Background and context

Subcommittee members traced elements of the firearms-surrender protocol to earlier incidents and to an operational MOU updated in February 2016, when the statutory compliance window for surrendering firearms changed to 24 hours. The group said the proposed language aims to reduce the chance that an agency or officer will fail to treat noncompliance as a potential criminal investigation rather than as an administrative follow-up.

A shared goal was to make expected practices clear to officers statewide: repeated attempts to serve warrants “as soon as practical,” consideration of reassignment to avoid delays from personnel absences, and efforts to notify victims of arrests and how to obtain updates.

Ending note

The subcommittee scheduled its next meeting for June 10 and will await possible legislative changes before finalizing additional edits. Members agreed to forward the LAP items to the full council and to send the arrest-warrant and firearms sections to the arrest-warrant subcommittee for detailed review.