Footage captured Monday in Murray showed a man wobbling down a sidewalk, appearing to have trouble with his forward momentum and balance.
He sometimes lurched toward cars in the roadway to his left, or stopped and sputtered with jerky, repetitive movements.
“This is why we don’t do drugs, ladies and gentlemen,” Salt Lake County district attorney candidate Danielle Ahn said in the video, posted to her campaign’s Instagram account.
Ahn, a Republican candidate, was on that stretch of State Street with at least one supporter to promote her district attorney campaign. She didn’t expect to see someone apparently in distress, but when she did, she began filming and said she eventually helped the man away from the street.
“I’m just out here. It’s just a regular day, right? And this stuff is happening and we can’t allow this to happen anymore,” Ahn said in the now-deleted footage, “and it’s because of lax enforcement, lax laws.”
Ahn removed the Instagram video from her campaign’s account Tuesday after it drew dozens of comments. Some argued it showed the harsh reality of the substance misuse problems Salt Lake County faces. Others called it exploitative — and her opponent, Democratic incumbent Sim Gill, agreed.
“It’s dehumanizing, it’s exploitive and it’s self-serving. The job of the D.A. is to protect people, not to exploit them,” Gill said. “That’s what leadership is about.”
Ultimately, Ahn deleted the footage because she realized it could do harm, she told The Salt Lake Tribune. In its place, Ahn later posted an image of herself and a police officer standing with the unsteady man captured in the footage. The photo was captioned with the same text as the video.
Ahn, who graduated from law school at the University of Utah in 2019, is running for district attorney on a tough-on-crime platform. She has blamed Gill’s reform policies for the county’s increase in homicides and violent crime over the last four years. The New York Times reported similar crime increases across the country, but reported in August that the U.S. is on-pace to have fewer homicides and shootings this year.
Gill, who has held the office since he was elected in 2010, has decried Ahn’s lack of prosecutorial experience, arguing that the act of her taking office would be a public safety concern. Ahn has never prosecuted a case but has litigation experience.
[Read more: What does a district attorney do? ACLU of Utah explains power at play in upcoming D.A. races]
Ahn said Tuesday that people have accused her of exaggerating when she talks about the issues that she said inspired her to run to lead the state’s busiest prosecutor’s office. But the situation she recorded Monday was proof of those issues, she said. She blamed Gill, arguing that the problem stemmed from his office, because, Ahn claimed, he does not prosecute drug dealers.
“Drug court is a wonderful asset but it isn’t a perfect solution for everyone and neither is incarceration, but ignoring the problem is unacceptable,” Ahn wrote in the Instagram caption for the now-deleted video and subsequent photo. “If this was my actual brother, I’d rather him get clean in jail than die on the street or hurt someone else. But my primary issue is with dealers who are responsible for the deaths of thousands.”
Gill said Ahn’s claim was false and his office does prosecute drug dealers. He said they do make a distinction between people who are big-time dealers and those with addictions who are selling small amounts of drugs to afford substances themselves.
“We prosecute drug dealers all the time because they are predatory over people’s human misery, of their addiction, and their weakness. And frankly,” Gill said about Ahn posting the video, “that’s exactly what she’s doing.”
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill talks about a fatal 2018 police shooting during a news conference in Salt Lake City on Friday, Aug. 26, 2022.
Gill said he has worked for more than 20 years to help those with mental health and substance misuse issues get treatment by creating specialty courts or diverting people who need those resources from the criminal justice system entirely.
“It’s not about simply prosecuting everybody. It’s about building an infrastructure so these things don’t happen,” Gill said, “so people have access to treatment in our community.”
[Read more: Salt Lake County D.A. Sim Gill, challenger Danielle Ahn clash over public safety]
Ahn added Tuesday that she decided to delete the video because she didn’t want to draw attention to the individual she filmed.
“I think that we need to do more to help not just people who are suffering with addiction, but those who have mental health [issues] and who are ending up in situations where they’re a risk to themselves or someone else. And that’s the whole intent behind the video in the first place,” she said, “was to say, ‘Hey, look, this is actually happening.’”
That people with substance misuse issues need more resources, she said, is something Ahn thinks she and Gill can agree on.
Court records show Murray police arrested the man that day and that he was later booked into jail on suspicion of intoxication and possession of drug paraphernalia, both misdemeanor offenses. A note on the probable cause statement mentioned that the man was a suspect in a Midvale criminal investigation.
Unified police, who have jurisdiction over Midvale, declined through a spokesperson to give additional details about the case. They only noted that it’s been turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The man was released from jail sometime early Tuesday.
