Strangulation: The Ultimate Red Flag in Domestic Violence — and Why NYPD’s New Unit Matters

By Tom Joyce and Pete Forcelli

In September, while attending the California District Attorneys Investigators Association Conference, Tom attended a presentation by Casey Gwinn, founder of the Family Justice Center movement and Alliance for HOPE International. His message was as direct as it was chilling: “Men who strangle women are the most dangerous men on the planet” (Gwinn & Strack, 2014).

That statement has stayed with Tom, and it frames the importance of what the NYPD just announced; the creation of a 450-officer Domestic Violence Unit, the largest of its kind in the country (Brown, Fischetti & Fitz-Gibbon, 2025). This move could not be timelier.

Strangulation is far more than an assault technique. It is an assertion of god-like control; the offender’s momentary belief that he decides whether the victim lives or dies. Survivors describe the terror of realizing they are seconds from death, often at the hands of someone who once professed love. Research shows that a single non-fatal strangulation increases a victim’s risk of later being murdered by that partner by more than 600 percent (Glass et al., 2008).

Gwinn and Gael Strack, co-founders of the Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention, have documented this same chilling pattern across decades: stranglers are found not only behind countless domestic-homicide cases but also among mass killers and cop killers. Their 2017 analysis showed that 75 percent of law-enforcement officers intentionally killed that year were slain by men with prior domestic-violence histories—often including strangulation (Alliance for HOPE International, 2017). The same behavioral profile appears repeatedly among mass shooters such as those in Orlando and Colorado Springs (Gwinn, 2016).

This isn’t a coincidence. It’s escalation! The will to control and dominate an intimate partner often metastasizes into broader acts of violence when unchecked.

Yet strangulation remains one of the most under-recognized crimes in policing. Roughly half of victims show no visible injury, and many minimize what happened because they “feel fine” afterward (Vehling, 2019). Patrol officers, EMTs, and even prosecutors may downplay the incident as a “simple assault.” In reality, it’s an attempted homicide measured in seconds.

That’s why the NYPD’s decision to realign detectives into a dedicated Domestic Violence Unit is so significant. If properly implemented—with training rooted in the research from Alliance for HOPE International, the Danger Assessment (Campbell, 1987), and trauma-informed response—it can save lives. These cases demand specialized investigators who understand both the forensic subtleties (voice changes, carotid injury, delayed stroke) and the behavioral red flags that distinguish a strangler from a typical abuser.

The data is unambiguous: victims of strangulation are more likely to be later killed with a firearm. As the Violence Policy Center reports, when an abuser has a gun, women are 1,100 percent more likely to be murdered (Spencer et al., 2018). In other words, strangulation is often the last warning shot before the trigger is pulled.

But there’s another layer. There is hope. Gwinn’s trauma-recovery framework reminds us that strangulation robs victims and their children not just of oxygen but of the future. Children who witness these acts carry invisible trauma that can echo across generations.

For police, this means treating every strangulation call as a high-risk, high-priority event. Ask the right questions: Did you lose consciousness? Are you having trouble swallowing or speaking? Do you remember everything that happened? And then insist on medical evaluation, even if no injuries are visible.

For policymakers, it means sustained investment in multidisciplinary models—Family Justice Centers, forensic-nurse programs, and coordinated prosecution strategies.
And for the rest of us, it means understanding that domestic-violence homicide rarely comes out of nowhere. The warning signs are there; we just have to act on them.

Strangulation is not a private dispute. It’s the visible tip of lethal intent. The NYPD’s new Domestic Violence Unit represents a step toward recognizing that truth—and toward ensuring that victims robbed of breath are not also robbed of hope.

References

Alliance for HOPE International. (2017). Analysis of law-enforcement officer homicides related to domestic violence. San Diego, CA: Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention.

Brown, H., Fischetti, M., & Fitz-Gibbon, J. (2025, October 16). NYPD launches new 450-cop unit to reshape response to domestic abuse cases. New York Post.

Campbell, J. (1987). The Danger Assessment: Instrument for assessing the risk of homicide in domestic violence cases. Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing.

Glass, N., Laughon, K., Campbell, J., Block, C., Hanson, G., Sharps, P., & Taliaferro, E. (2008). Non-fatal strangulation is an important risk factor for homicide of women. Journal of Emergency Medicine, 35(3), 329–335.

Gwinn, C., & Strack, G. (2014). Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention: National overview presentation. Alliance for HOPE International.

Spencer, C., Stith, S., & Jenkins, C. (2018). When Men Murder Women: An Analysis of 2018 Homicide Data. Violence Policy Center, Washington DC.

Vehling, S. (2019, October). Why strangulation in domestic violence is a huge red flag. American Nurse Journal.