One of the people involved in the burning of a police car during a Salt Lake City protest last year was sentenced to two years in federal prison this week. That’s after spending more than a year locked up at the Weber County Jail which will count as time served.
Published July 20, 2021 at 6:18 PM MDT Listen • 4:30
/ University of Utah Police Chief Rodney Chatman has been named vice president of campus safety at Brown University in Rhode Island. Chatman has been on leave at the U since December. This story and more in Tuesday evening s news brief.
Tuesday evening, July 20, 2021
Northern Utah
Approving Raise For Salt Lake City Police Officers
On Tuesday, the Salt Lake City Council is expected to finalize salary raises for police officers. But over the past year, some community members have called to defund the police. Salt Lake City Council Chair Amy Fowler said the city never supported defunding the police. But she said she is interested in creating alternative options to calling law enforcement. Meanwhile, the police and prison abolitionist group Decarcerate Utah feels their demands over the past year have gone ignored. A representative from the organization said they’ll continue to educate the publi
Decarcerate Utah, a group looking to defund the Salt Lake City Police Department, listed their demands Tuesday, saying local leaders have ignored the “will of the people,” according to KUTV.
In a new declaration, the group claims the police department is overstaffed compared to similar-sized cities across the nation. They suggest the number of employees in the SLCPD be cut in half (from 711 to 356), which would free up a lot of money that could be spent elsewhere.
The group’s demands also include a reduction in the police department’s budget from $79 million to $39.5 million, the elimination of funding from the non-departmental budget reserved for policing operations and investment of the saved funds from the police department into supportive community programs.