[Content Note: Domestic violence; descriptions of violence at link.]
"The minute you put pressure on someone's neck, you are really announcing that you are a killer."—Gael Strack, "a former domestic violence prosecutor in California who is now one of the nation's leading strangulation experts," and who, in 2001, led a groundbreaking study on strangulation cases, finding not only that "the criminal justice system didn't really have a way to appropriately prosecute strangulations," but also that strangulation "is one of the best predictors of a future homicide in domestic violence cases."
Strack has since "been crisscrossing the country teaching police and prosecutors how to investigate and prosecute strangulation in the absence of visible injuries, and lobbying states to pass felony strangulation laws."
The family of Monica Weber-Jeter, whose case is detailed at the link, have launched an important petition advocating making non-fatal strangulation a felony in her home state of Ohio. You can sign that petition here.
That strangulation is such a common precursor of homicide in domestic violence cases is such a crucial thing for law enforcement to understand, and for all the rest of us to understand, too.
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