Salt Lake City police seek to enter new age, build training facility after 175 years

A lot has changed since Salt Lake City established its official police department 175 years ago this month.

Forty men earning 25 cents an hour replaced the system run by a town marshal after pioneers arrived in the valley. Today, there are more than 600 sworn officers and the department operates on a budget of $135 million.

Big changes are on the horizon as the department also enters the next chapter in the city’s history. The department is working to establish what it calls a real-time crime center, which could be set up this year. It also hopes to have a new training center within the next decade.

Finding new ways to fight crime

The Salt Lake City Police Department first installed “call boxes” throughout the city that directed people to the department in 1892, as telephone connections slowly became more available throughout Utah at that time. There were no patrol cars until 1909, as the automobile became more widespread.

All of this is to say that technology has changed the way policing works over the past 175 years. As lawmakers sorted through relics of the past on display Thursday at the Utah Capitol to celebrate the department’s 175th anniversary, Salt Lake City Deputy Police Chief Bill Manzanares and Sgt. Joshua Ashdown provided demonstrations of one of the department’s newest features.

The department has been testing drones for a few years now, but it’s also working to speed up its operations to free up time for officers to handle more urgent calls. For example, if the police receive a call about a disruptive person, a drone pilot can fly a drone to the scene to assess it. If the situation has cleared up, the call may be canceled before the police arrive.

About a third of the low-priority calls the drones were used on were resolved without an officer arriving on the scene, Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd said. In other cases, police may send Civilian Response Team officers to handle the low-risk situation.

“It’s a big efficiency when we can direct our officers to higher priority calls, where safety concerns are involved,” he told KSL.

They can also help officers locate suspects during high-priority calls.

The goal is to strategically place drone pods across the city to respond more quickly to these types of calls when they come in, according to police. It is part of a real-time crime center that seeks to improve response times. It is currently in its “early stages,” but drones, license plate readers, traffic cameras and other cameras can be activated in emergencies to speed up response times.

However, this type of implementation, which could come later this year, has also raised concerns. City leaders have yet to decide on a $224,000 grant to expand the city’s license plate reader camera system, amid concerns from residents about how that data is used.

“This is supposed to be the freest country on the planet, and since when is creating a system of mass surveillance an element of freedom?” resident Charlie Padilla said at a Salt Lake City Council meeting in December.

Others expressed concerns that the data could be sent to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or other federal agencies. Redd is aware of these concerns and he said transparent reporting and auditing could be implemented before the city accepts the grant. He added that the technologies would only be used in an active situation and not to spy on residents.

A new training center?

This wouldn’t be the only major change in police history. The Salt Lake City Police Foundation has presented conceptual renderings of a massive new training center the city hopes to build, which would consolidate aging facilities it uses throughout the valley.

The ideal facility would include several elements, including classrooms, shooting ranges, crime labs, a vehicle course and a “scenario village.” The latter includes makeshift homes, commercial buildings, transit stops and even an airplane cabin — anything police can respond to on a call — to train officers to be ready for anything.

The facility could be shared with the city fire department or other state departments, Redd said.

“Realistically, for law enforcement in the state, we are in dire need of more space for training,” he said, noting that some facilities used by departments will close soon.

He hopes the project can be completed before the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, but it’s unclear if that can happen. Current facilities have been “woefully inadequate” for decades, but solving the problem remains a work in progress, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall said.

There have been some land discussions in recent years, but no parcel has yet been identified for the site. The city is still gathering projected costs and potential funding sources, making timelines for all projects unclear.

“(The concept) is representative of the ambition we have to put in place something that is appropriate for our police,” she said.