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KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Utah will implement a statewide sexual assault investigation policy, initiated by HB322, passed in 2024.
- Rep. Angela Romero and Maj. Travis Rees lead efforts to unify investigation practices.
- The policy aims to enhance victim service and improve investigative outcomes across Utah.
SALT LAKE CITY ā Utah will soon have a uniform sexual assault investigation policy that law enforcement agencies across the state can use to catch sexual predators and better serve victims.
The policy is the result of HB322, sponsored by Rep. Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, and passed by the Utah Legislature in 2024. The law directs the Utah Peace Officer Standards and Training Council to create a model based on best practices.
“We’re going to see who utilizes it and then from there, we’ll move forward,” Romero told KSL when the legislation passed last year.
Maj. Travis Rees, director of Utah’s POST Council, is heading up the effort to create Utah’s model sexual assault investigation policy.
“Our ultimate goal is better service to victims, better outcomes,” he said.
Through the Failure to Protect series, the KSL Investigators have covered Utah cases where a sexual predator remains free to hurt others because the investigation into one survivor’s complaint stalls or is wrongfully closed, evidence isn’t collected in a timely manner, or the case is inactivated before detectives interview the suspect. Rees and Romero have said the goal is to have a statewide model that can unify the way law enforcement across Utah respond to reports of sexual assault.
No department will be obligated to use the policy, but Rees said it will be available to all of them.
“I think most agencies will use it as a resource,” he said.
The director of the Victim Services Commission, the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program manager, the director of the Utah Office for Victims of Crime, the Utah Prosecution Council, special victims unit detectives, the Utah Chiefs of Police Association and the Utah Sheriffs’ Association have all provided input on the draft policy, according to Rees.
When asked whether the policy calls for attempting to contact a sexual assault suspect ā a critical step the KSL Investigators have found gets skipped in some cases ā he said the committee working on the policy had not discussed it, but he planned to bring it up.
“I’m going to discuss that with the committee because that is a common issue,” he said.
The POST Council is expected to vote on the model policy during its next meeting on March 20.
“We really just want to encourage victims to come forward and let us try and help and hopefully bring people to justice,” Rees said.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.