Unified police agency won't work, Winder says

A move to create a Salt Lake County-wide policing agency is doomed to fail, according to the man seeking to unseat 16-year incumbent Sheriff Aaron Kennard.

Even a plan in the works to give cities more local police control while maintaining some sort of unified police force won't work, Democratic candidate Jim Winder said.

Both models would be an administrative nightmare as local mayors would retain the right to hire police chiefs and have too much control, Winder said.

"It shouldn't be about a power thing, it should be about what's right and wrong," Winder told the Deseret Morning News editorial board Monday. "We're getting the worst of both models."

County leaders are working with several area mayors on designing a way to pool police services at the lowest possible cost.

Last month, the Unified Police Department's governing board voted to postpone the creation of the countywide police agency for a year while the board looks at other options and refines the current Unified Police Department model.

Key to the negotiations is the issue of local control: Mayors in member cities want to have more input over hiring and firing, including ultimate say over the selection of the local chief.

That kind of organization could pose big problems as egos and power-trips could take over and manifest themselves in the form of turf wars, Winder said. Plus, finding a company to insure the UPD could be impossible as it would be nearly impossible to determine who holds ultimate liability when something goes wrong, and there are too many chiefs, Winder said.

Now the UPD's governing board is looking at tweaking the county's current contracting model. Under that plan, the sheriff's office would contract services to cities across the valley and the county would be separated into five precincts.

Kennard started the idea of the UPD after Draper and Taylorsville stopped contracting with the sheriff for police services and started their own police departments.

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E-mail: ldethman@desnews.com