Salt Lake County aiming to centralize police units

With the slow but sure erosion of funding and personnel in the sheriff's office, Salt Lake County officials hope to shore up policing by centralizing its fragmented law enforcement services.

The proposed Unified Police District has been in the works for months, and Councilman Jim Bradley plans to bring the project before the County Council as early as next week. He even hopes to have the force pulled together within six months.

"Things are moving very quickly. We've gotten down to where we're talking about what kind of envelopes should the checks be mailed in," said Bradley, who is part of a committee to create an implementation plan for the UPD.

Much like the Unified Fire Authority, the UPD would be the umbrella organization to law enforcement throughout the county. The key difference, however, is that the UPD would function on a precinct model where cities still retain some local control.

City mayors would still be in charge of their precinct, which would be run by a city police chief.

"There's just greater efficiencies in terms of dealing with a large populations rather than having to divide responsibilities among multiple jurisdictions," Bradley said. "It's easier to track and chase criminals and allocate manpower."

Much of the push to bring the county's disparate forces under one roof stems from incorporations and cities creating their own police forces, county Sheriff Aaron Kennard said. Nine cities have a city police force, while five cities — Bluffdale, Herriman, Holladay, Riverton and Cottonwood Heights — still contract with Salt Lake County for law enforcement.

And as cities form individual forces, Kennard said the county is often left in a lurch trying to cover the remaining areas of unincorporated Salt Lake County with fewer officers and less money.

Kennard said he worries that response times may suffer "because of our inability to answer routine calls."

"As the numbers decrease from the sheriff's office, it's tougher to provide big numbers on big events like a tornado or if we end up having an earthquake or a major flood," he said.

With Taylorsville recently creating its own police force this year and Draper starting up its department in 2003, Bradley said the county sheriff's office has been faced with funding falling faster than costs.

The county also loses out when contracting cities use a "cafeteria approach to law enforcement" by picking and choosing their services, Bradley said. Several cities have opted out of certain services like the SWAT team, police dogs and the narcotics task force. That scenario leaves the county with the brunt of the cost just to keep the programs alive, he said.