Salt Lake City’s policing plans do not get to the root causes of crime.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown and Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall hold a press event on Monday, Oct. 10, 2022, to announce an update to the city’s crime control plan.
I recently read about Salt Lake City’s “new” strategy to reduce violent crime on our streets. Police Chief Mike Brown called the approach to send more officers to crime-prone areas the most innovative he’s seen in his 30-year career.
The approach is as old as policing itself, going by different names such as “cops on dots,” “CompStat,” or Rudy Giuliani’s “broken windows.” What it’s never been called is community-based policing, human-focused or a long-term success. This approach leads to increased racial disparity and generational poverty, two critical issues causing the crisis in policing we experience today.
These old policing approaches inevitably result in more Black people, brown people, poor people, homeless people and marginalized people being harassed and picked up for low-level, non-violent crimes. Does that make us safer? Is the community better? Are long-term root issues addressed?
Or are Brown and Mayor Erin Mendenhall just trying to present old and tired systems that have failed time and time again as innovation because they have no real plan to offer. I’m tired of their pretty unity photo ops, and earnest sounding press conferences being the best they have to offer our capital city in law enforcement and leadership.
Mayor, Salt Lake City will support community-based, progressive and innovative processes. Please give us the specialized talent and leadership we deserve.
The program Mendenhall and Brown outlined doesn’t take into account the factors that are a higher predictor of crime, including the economy, access to education and medical care. Failing to address the underlying needs of a home, job, food and health care results in disorder. These tactics also create distrust of police among those communities being targeted and ultimately abused.
Violent crime in our capital city has increase 20% in the past two years, yet Mendenhall and Brown choose to continue to misrepresent this data to make it look much better than it is. In the same report cited by Mendenhall and Brown that they use to try and convince us that violent crime decreased over the last year, the study’s authors, from the University of Texas at San Antonio, specifically noted that “when viewing crime statistics over a more extended period, violent street crime increased approximately 20% over the past two years in Salt Lake City.”
The authors also noted that the violent street crime did “not include family-related offenses or sexual assaults.” A report by the Utah Women & Leadership Project released this month shows that Utah has higher rates of rape than the national average, ranking Utah as the ninth highest in the nation for the number of rapes per capita.
We must do better. We cannot continue to make subpar measurement goals. The mayor and chief must stop trying to convince Salt Lakers that the only time leaders can lead is when things aren’t so hard. Leaders don’t make excuses; they have the discipline and creativity to solve problems and get things done for the people they serve.
Promises of a better tomorrow won’t become a reality if we don’t start leading today. It’s time for the mayor to hire a chief of police that will lead the department, not just follow the politicians. Mayor Mendenhall, it’s time to start leading. It is time for you to give us a chief that wants to lead and has the ability to lead.
David Ibarra is a leadership consultant, entrepreneur, speaker and author with a background in the hospitality, automotive, and talent development industries. He lives and works in downtown Salt Lake City.
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