About 50 protesters gathered in Washington Square on Thursday, criticizing a revised Salt Lake City crime plan announced Wednesday and calling for more open communication between officials and the community.
The protesters demanded reform to qualified immunity for police officers, a legal protection that officers can raise when faced with civil rights lawsuits seeking damages. And they called for independent civilian review boards to investigate complaints against police. The Salt Lake City police civilian review board currently serves in an advisory role in assessing police misconduct complaints and has no independent disciplinary power, according to the city’s website.
The group at the Thursday protest — which was organized by Black Lives Matter Utah, the Community Activists Group and Utah Against Police Brutality — also called for more funding to be allocated to social programs instead of militarized police gear and proposed that officers who turn off their body cameras during excessive uses of force be fired.
Rae Duckworth, operating chair of the Utah chapter of Black Lives Matter, said she was embarrassed when she heard about the updated crime plan Mayor Erin Mendenhall and Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown announced Wednesday.
The 17-page plan detailed four overall goals: lower crime, improve response times, fill officer vacancies and build on community relationships. The 2021 plan was initially released in January, but the updates announced Wednesday were developed as police worked to reassess and implement parts of it, officials said.
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall, right, and Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown present a revised crime control plan to media at the Public Safety Building, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. The plan calls for new incentives to attract more police officers and reprioritize policing in the state’s largest city.
“I’m disappointed because [Mendenhall] has four promises, and only one of the four supports the community and the rest support the police,” Duckworth said. “That further influences me to believe that the community is not her priority. The police are.”
The mayor’s office later said that the protesters’ demands for qualified immunity reform and more authority for the independent review board were out of the city’s reach and would require changes from the state Legislature.
Duckworth said that as of Saturday, she had not heard from the mayor’s office about their inability to carry out the protesters’ demands. Duckworth thinks that Mendenhall could take executive action to push the demands through.
‘Community conversations aren’t meant to be pretty’
Duckworth said the Community Activists Group regularly meets to offer family members of people who have experienced police brutality the opportunity to discuss proposed changes to help prevent such violence in the future. Mendenhall no longer wants to participate in those conversations, Duckworth said.
In a news conference announcing the updated plan Wednesday, Mendenhall said it’s “completely untrue that we’re disengaging from reform.” The mayor noted that no other city in the state has established a reform mechanism like the Commission on Racial Equity in Policing that Salt Lake City launched in June 2020.
“She’s encouraging people to go to this commission, but the commission is nothing but a pretty plaque,” Duckworth said. “It’s her pretty, formal conversation for police reform.”
The Commission made “significant budgetary recommendations” that led to the implementation of 12 more social workers, Mendenhall said Wednesday, as well as the use of $200,000 to provide diversity and equity training to officers from members of the community.
To Duckworth, Mendenhall’s emphasis on the more formal commission and lack of focus on the Community Activists Group is unfair because it takes power away from the community, she argued, and “community conversations aren’t meant to be pretty.”
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Rae Duckworth speaks at a protest hosted by Black Lives Matter, Utah Against Police Brutality and The Community Activist Group demanding police reform, claiming the mayor and SLCPD have "elected to disengage" from open conversation with the community about such reform, in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021.
“Sometimes they get really dirty, and they’re emotional,” Duckworth argued. “They’re colorful. The fact that [Mendenhall] wants to steer away from that is really disrespectful, especially because the people that participate heavy in that conversation are family members of people who have experienced police violence.”
‘Homelessness will not go away’
The revised plan announced 10 new, grant-funded officer positions that would give the police department the capacity to hire a “historic high” of 581 officers, Brown said.
To accomplish the plan’s four key goals, the department plans to offer new incentives to help fill officer vacancies, a key component to combatting lagging response times, officials said. The incentives include bonuses for current officers who successfully refer a lateral officer — a Utah police officer with at least one year of experience — as well as housing incentives for officers and an expansion of the department’s take-home car policy.
Duckworth feels that the updated plan doesn’t match up with Mendenhall’s promises of police reform.
“It’s extra disrespectful because this mayor had the audacity to come out here and kneel during protests,” Duckworth said. “If you kneel with us, it’s because you’re with us. You stand with us in solidarity.”
Duckworth led chants at the meeting, including, “No justice. No peace,” and “Recall Mendenhall.”
The mayor’s office noted in a statement Saturday that the city currently budgets more than $15 million to support services for the unsheltered.
Stacey Johnson also addressed the crowd, sharing her experience as an unsheltered person in Salt Lake City. Johnson reported that she and her husband, who is a person of color, were attacked by a woman who bit them repeatedly. She said no police responded in her time of need that night, but the next morning, officers forced her to leave her camp.
“Homelessness will not go away. We’re people. Lives don’t go away,” Johnson told the crowd.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Stacey Johnson, a woman experiencing homelessness, speaks at a protest hosted by Black Lives Matter, Utah Against Police Brutality and The Community Activist Group demanding police reform, claiming the mayor and SLCPD have "elected to disengage" from open conversation with the community about such reform, in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021.
Johnson expressed frustration about the way that SLCPD treats unsheltered people and slammed Mendenhall for not attending any camp abatements.
“You can’t erase people. No matter how many camps you close,” Johnson said.
Brown said on Wednesday that agencies other than police may begin responding to calls in cases where such agencies may be better equipped to respond than officers, including mental health crises that don’t involve aggression or a weapon.
“We look every day for ways to better engage with our community to hear them, to make them part of this organization,” Brown said. He noted that SLCPD holds monthly meetings with the Latino Coalition, a refugee community group and with Native Hawaiian Pacific Islanders.
