Womens Legal Resource

Non-profit organization Victim Protection, Inc. (V.P.I.), is addressing the need to protect crime victims in Colorado. Crimes in Colorado are on the rise, with a total of 11,636 victims of domestic violence reported in 2008. These figures include 33 deaths that were related to domestic violence issues, 21% of these being the deaths of children.

There is an urgent need for thousands of people to receive some kind of physical protection service; however, there are no services of this kind available in Colorado. V.P.I. believes that if this resource becomes available, many deaths and injuries can be avoided.

V.P.I. states, “victims have no physical protection other than a piece of paper from the court, restraining orders, which provide little help”. Many offenders break the conditions of their restraining order, and nothing can be done until law enforcement arrives. A survey undertaken by V.P.I in 2008 showed that 350 people in the Denver metro area needed some type of physical protection service. This is truly alarming, as there is no funding available for such a task.

There are various ways in which victims can be protected. These include checking the victim’s home and vehicles for devices, providing safe transportation, and access to surveillance. Without this protection, many offenders will never be caught, as victims fear for their lives and the lives of others if they testify.

It is up to everyone to help ensure Colorado gets the same availability of programs as other areas in the U.S. such as San Diego, CA, and Chicago, IL. Both of these areas, as well as various others, have stalking units and domestic violence taskforces. There is no reason these cannot also be implemented in Colorado – in fact, there is a necessity to do so. If this does not happen, we will inevitably see more and more people victimized and killed.

To learn more about this topic and how you can help, please click here to see the full white paper written by Gary L. Cunningham, Director of Victim Protection, Inc.

Tags: alexis a. moore, Colorado, domestic violence, DV murders, Lynn Rosenhal, Murder, Randi Rosen, Stalking, V.P.I, VAWA, Victim protection inc, Womens Legal Resource

This entry was posted by womenslegal on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 11:59 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.