Domestic violence: We can’t throw too harsh a light on this problem

The recent killings of two Tremonton-Garland police officers responding to a domestic violence call threw a harsh spotlight on a dark subject — one that Liz Johnson and Wendy Isom would be the first to tell you is far too prevalent in our society. So the harsher the spotlight, the better.

Liz is a Salt Lake City Police Department sergeant in the domestic violence unit. Wendy is a director of the SLCPD’s victim advocate program. The numbers they cite are alarming:

In Salt Lake City alone, according to Sgt. Johnson, the police field 250 domestic violence calls every month that are serious enough that a victim might need to relocate and find shelter.

And yet, Isom notes, vacancies in the estimated 1,500 beds in the state’s dozen or so nonprofit shelters are hard to come by.

“On any given