Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall this month recommended a nearly $21 million budget increase for the Salt Lake City Police Department in 2022, with the majority earmarked for employee raises.
If approved, the proposal would mark the department’s largest budget increase in at least a decade. Last year’s budget allocated a nearly $4.3 million increase for the department, bringing SLCPD’s total budget to $83,370,502.
This year’s recommendation would bring the city police department’s budget to $103,944,583.
Here’s how that additional money would be spent:
Where would most of the money go?
The biggest chunk — almost $8.3 million — of the proposed increase would go toward funding the police salary changes that Mendenhall announced last summer.
Those raises amounted to a 30% pay increase for entry-level officers and a 12% increase for senior-level officers, which situated the department to lead the state in law enforcement pay, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall said.
“That is a commitment on my part — that Salt Lake City should endeavor to be a pay leader in the state, because the work that the Salt Lake City Police Department does is absolutely unique,” Mendenhall told The Salt Lake Tribune.
The raises, announced June 25, 2021, were initially funded by a portion of Salt Lake City’s $85,411,572 allocation from the American Rescue Plan Act.
Under the new proposal, the city’s general fund would pay for the ongoing salary changes — and further salary proposals, including an additional $3.9 million recommended salary allocation this year, which would account for a 4.5% general pay increase for non-union police employees.
Allocations for new programs intended to create ‘systemic change’
Although the majority of the Salt Lake police budget is earmarked for salary changes, the proposal includes many new policies that the Commission on Racial Equity in Policing believes will effectively transform the department.
“These aren’t the big, sexy, flashy changes — these are the changes that are long term,” Nicole Salazar-Hall, chair of the commission, said.
“It is the solid foundation that we need to build a better police department on,” Salazar-Hall continued, adding that “it’s really what we wanted — which was a long-term, systemic change in the police department.”
The proposed “civilian response team” marks one of the department’s biggest policy-based undertakings in the next fiscal year.
The team will handle low-priority calls that don’t necessitate a sworn officer, including car break-ins without a suspect on site, damaged property, threats, suspicious persons and unwanted people on a property.
It was recommended by the City Council’s operational audit of the department in 2020-21 — and supported by the Racial Equity in Policing commission.
Salt Lake City police Chief Mike Brown said the department aims to hire a lieutenant to oversee the team as soon as possible, once approved by the council. The department then hopes to fill civilian positions on the team in January in order to have them available for dispatch by March 2023.
“Our intent is to expand this program with non-sworn officers who will be trained on the proper way to process these types of reports,” Brown said. “We will also ensure these civilians are in contact with patrol supervisors — so that when there is a call that needs to go to the field, it gets routed properly and quickly.”
But some feel these new positions only scratch the surface in terms of the policing overhaul they believe is necessary.
Pegasus Blaise Collonge, a volunteer with prison abolitionist organization Decarcerate Utah, said the only “bright spot” for such a team is if its assigned employees are aware of what Collonge called the “fundamental” problems with policing.
“If the civilian response team knows that the institution is flawed to begin with — the policing part,” Collogne said, “then those civilians can have in their minds solutions and an ideology that works better ... to creatively solve problems that do not include the violence of police.”
The team was an idea that Racial Equity in Policing Commission members had been discussing informally since before the commission even officially existed.
But for Salazar-Hall, the commission’s chair, the most-anticipated new budget item is the department’s planned investment in its Promising Youth Program.
The program works with other community groups in Salt Lake City to help children between the ages of 8 and 18 develop life skills through projects and outdoor activities. The organization hosts a 15-week program for these activities, which addresses “specific social factors that predispose youth to violence, crime and gang involvement.”
“It increases law enforcement’s presence with children in a positive way, and not in a negative way,” Salazar-Hall said of the program. “We don’t want [children] to see them as the enemy because really, what our ideal version of law enforcement is, is a group of people who help our city — people don’t fear them, they see them as a sign of safety for everybody.”
The drafted budget allocates nearly $274,000 to four, full-time positions with the program; three were previously funded under grants that expire in July. That money would also cover expenses, such as supplies.
Another budget item that the commission specifically recommended: the addition of a community outreach and recruiting coordinator, who will work to develop relationships with historically disenfranchised communities in Salt Lake City and promote careers in law enforcement to those communities.
Collonge believes these new positions aren’t indicative of a transformation in policing, but instead band-aid solutions to a much bigger problem which won’t be solved with a larger budget. He’d rather see a cut to the department’s budget, and reallocation of existing funds to non-police solutions.
“So much more good could be done for human lives, human dignity, for anti-racist work, for all sorts of good things with that extra money,” Collonge continued. “[It] could go to help many, many more people than just a few officers’ salaries.”
Salazar Hall acknowledged that impact — and change — will take time, but she reiterated that the current budget aims to actively fund such inward and outward departmental changes that the commission hopes to see.
“The long-term impact that we were hoping for with implementation of a positive culture in the Salt Lake City Police Department probably won’t be felt for another few years after that,” Salazar-Hall said.
“I think we have some good people in leadership positions to mentor and to lead with the right behavior that we want to see,” she added. “But it is going to take some time.”
Filling officer vacancies — and brand new positions
At the time of last year’s announced raises, the Salt Lake City Police Department was down by over 60 officers.
Chief Mike Brown said the department is now down 37 officers, and while they are making “great strides” with recruitment and hiring, the agency still has a ways to go.
The budget proposal would add 33 new, full-time employees to the department, the majority of whom would be civilians. Three police social workers were transferred to the fire department, so the additional positions would bring a net increase of 30 employees to the department.
Of the 33 new, full-time employees, 21 would be civilians — including 12 members of the proposed civilian response team; four youth specialists as part of the Promising Youth Program; a victim advocate program director; a victim advocate coordinator; a victim advocate; a public records program manager; and a community outreach/recruiting coordinator.
Those 21 positions account for about $1.61 million of the nearly $21 million budget increase for SLCPD, of which about 93% is allocated to personal services — including the salary changes from last year and the 4.5% increase this year, among other line items.
The other 12 full-time employees would include a sworn director for the civilian response team, a sergeant to supervise the Special Victims Unit and 10 new police officers to form a recently-approved Violent Crimes Unit. These officers account for about $754,000 of the budget.
The new positions would bring the department’s full-time employee staffing up to 750 personnel this year, as opposed to from 720 in the last fiscal year.
A public hearing on the proposed budget is slated for June 7 at 7 p.m. The City Council could approve the proposal as soon as June.
