435 Podcast: Southern Utah
Explore the heartbeat of Southern Utah with the 435 Podcast, your go-to source for all things local in Washington County. Stay ahead of the curve with our in-depth coverage, expert analysis, and captivating interviews. Whether you're a resident or visitor, our podcast is your key to unlocking the latest happenings and trends in St. George and the surrounding areas. Tune in now to stay informed and connected with our thriving community!
435 Podcast: Southern Utah
How St. George Gained Community Support During Anti-Police Protests
While most American cities faced intense anti-police sentiment in previous years, something remarkable happened in Washington County, Utah – the community actually rallied around their officers with unprecedented support. How did they do it?
Join us for an eye-opening conversation with St. George Police Chief Kyle Whitehead and Washington County Sheriff Nate Brooksby, who bring over 50 years of combined law enforcement experience. They reveal how they've maintained surprisingly low crime rates while policing one of America's fastest-growing regions.
What You'll Discover:
• How officer wellness programs replaced the "tough guy" mentality with mental health support
• Why their Recovery Court program has a 30% higher success rate than private treatment
• Their balanced approach to immigration enforcement that prioritizes community safety
• How school resource officers are building bridges with the next generation
• The logistical challenges of rapid population growth and sprawling neighborhoods
This isn't your typical law enforcement interview. These chiefs offer a nuanced, community-focused approach that extends far beyond badges and handcuffs. Whether you're interested in criminal justice reform, considering a move to Southern Utah, or simply want to understand how effective policing works in practice, this conversation offers valuable insights into building trust between law enforcement and communities.
For us in St George. We've really tried to focus on creating a welcoming culture for our employees, the millennial generation and the ones behind it.
Speaker 2:Are you seeing that they need this encouragement? Pat on the back. Is there a little bit more of that that is required now than it was before, or is the personality of a police officer just kind of typically alpha male types that they don't really do that?
Speaker 1:You compare us to any other community or county or metropolitan area throughout the country, for the similar 200,000 population, I still feel like we have a relatively low crime rate. Oh for sure.
Speaker 2:From the Blue Form Media.
Speaker 1:Studios. This is the 435 Podcast the pulse of Southern Utah. This is the 435.
Speaker 2:Podcast the pulse of Southern Utah. If you're looking for a nice cup of coffee and you're in downtown St George FS Coffee Co, that's where you're going to want to stop. It's right there on the corner of Tabernacle and Main Street in downtown St George. So if you've got a bicycle, ride it on down there and grab a drip coffee and tell them the 435 guys sent you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they didn't teach us that kind of stuff in the police academy. They didn't how to deal with multimillion dollar budgets and personnel issues.
Speaker 2:It's more on how to diffuse situations at that stage. So when did you get in?
Speaker 1:How long have you been with St George? 20,. This is my 26th year, so I'll 26 in november. Wow, so 25 total. Yeah, I started here. I've been always with saint george police and, uh, born and raised originally from here. In fact, my grandfather was the county sheriff back in the 60s and 70s, oh crazy. So served four, four terms that happens.
Speaker 2:Quite a lot is like police officers, their kids. A lot of them become police officers or or in the law enforcement that happens.
Speaker 2:You see it quite a bit kind of a family, family oriented career yeah, it's like once you see dad, a part of it, there's there's the bad things, but then there's like the good things about it. My, uh, my father-in-law was a detective in garden grove. He's a homicide detective at the end, but he did patrol and all kinds of stuff in Garden Grove but he had all girls and none of them became law enforcement.
Speaker 1:We've hired a lot of our retired employees. Their kids now work for us. Yeah, so we have several that have come back and they work. It's kind of cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So watching St George, you've been here for the big bulk of most of the change. I mean there was a big change between pre-1970 and then from the 70s to the 90s, but really since the 2000s that's been yeah so all through the 80s, growing up in the 90s, when I was in high school, it was just a lot of change.
Speaker 1:I wasn't paying so much attention to it because I was just growing up and having fun. But looking back now and realizing the growth. But then, yeah man, the 2000s hit and it's just been a rocket crazy. Never, never thought I didn't think. You know in my lifetime, and a lot of the old timers I talked to we never thought we'd see this type of change. Yeah, you know, in saint george, so it's been pretty intense meaning they.
Speaker 2:You couldn't see a world where so many people would want to live here, or yeah?
Speaker 1:I just it always seemed like kind of a little out of the way place, even though we're along I-15, it seemed to me like just kind of a little Mayberry, you know where people wouldn't necessarily want to be here and and I mean it's always been a great place for recreation and outdoors and that's always attracted some people, but more just passing through on vacation, yeah. But now we just see so many people wanting to come here and live and partake of the great things we offer. You know, as far as outdoors, but then also I think it's just our community, and probably some of what we're going to talk about today is just the great support that we have. We have good people here, yeah, Both people that have been here for decades and people that are moving here. For the most part, we're seeing just great people that support public safety. They support us and it's just great. A lot of people ask me what happened after COVID and comparing pre-COVID to post-COVID or George Floyd or whatever you want to focus on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just like the big wave of anti-law enforcement. You saw that around the country and I tell them honestly in Washington County, nothing floyd or whatever you want to focus on. Yeah, just like the big wave of anti-law enforcement.
Speaker 1:You saw that around the country and I tell them honestly, in washington county nothing didn't we.
Speaker 3:We saw an outpouring of support. So we had you know the big back, the blue signs everywhere. You had you know local businesses buying those signs and hand them out to to anyone and everyone. So I felt like, um, whatever was going on in the country, we it was an opposite feeling here, that everybody came out of the woodwork to support us. Probably more support.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but some, some of the anti there was, some anti law enforcement there was a couple of small group protests and stuff like that, but it seemed like we had some meetings too at the time.
Speaker 1:You know, we we tried to sit down and hear concerns and, uh, we spoke with several people that and I wouldn't even say they were necessarily anti. I think it was just this, maybe an opportunity to try and get some change to happen. And now everybody has their idea of what that change should look like. You know, and, and we listened, but uh, we felt like you know our community and what, how things were going here, at least in St George, we felt like it was headed in a good direction, yeah, and so we listened, but when, when, sometimes some of those agendas would try and be pushed on us, we respectfully decline and say, you know, one of the big things was like school resource officers. I remember that was kind of a point of I wouldn't say contention, but people were like, oh, police officers shouldn't be in schools. I wouldn't say contention, but people were like, oh, police officers shouldn't be in schools, we shouldn't have cops in schools, it should be social workers and you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:And I that doesn't make any sense at all and that was going to be. My question was like what? Like? What were the arguments? Like what would they want to see change in? Because I looked across the country and I thought it was just, it was madness. It's like people had been completely brainwashed. It's like let's get rid of police altogether because there's some racism element to it. I was like wait a minute with the alternative. What's the alternative? The alternative is way worse.
Speaker 3:We saw how that played out. So Seattle, the big major cities that did defund the police, minnesota, they've had to walk that all back. They've had to like double pay to get law enforcement to even come back, because you have to have law enforcement, you have to have law and order in our society.
Speaker 2:So they learned their lesson, but now they're paying a price for it for you know, 10, 15 years, you see this big push and you're like I'm out of here, I'm gonna go somewhere else, they don't come back right and then. So then you're just stuck with whoever's left and it's like you know the qualification you went from I need a really high qualified individual to just whoever says that they'll raise their hand right, and then that that becomes really difficult to set these, these standards. Like I'm not racist, you're hired it's like wait a minute.
Speaker 3:Well, at the end of the day, the boots on the ground, the police officers and my deputies. They need to know that their governing body, whether it's the elected sheriff or the city council, mayor, that they're supported, and if you have a mayor or city council, that's anti-police. That's such a ding to morale that no one's going to want to work for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the questions I kind of gave you in advance to think about that was, like you know, building morale within the police force.
Speaker 2:Cause it's a tough job, man, it's a tough job I had. I had a friend this is back when I was living in California and he worked at the Irvine PD and he, it was a no response, it was a a call to check on somebody's you know if they're okay a wellness call, welfare check, welfare check, and the guy had been dead for probably like a week, so he's out bloated and he like he came back and he was telling me like how much that impacted in like the smell and in the house and everything and it's, it's tough, it's bad man, it's it's hard to like think the personality that takes because you think they're just cops that are just writing tickets right, pulling people over. But you know, even in this small town stuff like that happens and there's there's a lot of emotional like drain that happens on police officers. So that morale, keeping morale up within the the force, seems like something you have to actively do all the time Is there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know like for us in St George, we've really tried to focus on creating a welcoming culture for our employees. Um, it seems like law enforcement. Even in my career. It's changed a lot, you know, compared to when I first started and you, you had these challenging calls and you'd feel these emotions and and kind of the the. The idea sometimes was like don't get emotional, you get. You know they're going to think you're crazy, they're going to think I need to go to a counselor and then they'll get fired from the job. And so now, though, we we make it very much a part of of our culture and you know we've for our officers, we mandate every year they go through and get a talk with a counselor. We give them an hour. They're paid for it, they don't have to say anything, but at least we get them in the door. We have a peer support team in our department to help with some of the more senior officers to mentor the more junior officers.
Speaker 1:We really try and focus on overall wellness. For years it was just physical wellness and being physically fit for the job, but now we're seeing a transition and that there's such a need for just a well-rounded wellness of a person and just taking law enforcement away from it. Life's stressful, right, and people are stressed, and so anything we can do to try and help minimize that stress and so we provide a lot of training we really try and help our officers cope with, you know, whether it's work-related stress or personal stress we want to make sure that they're. Look, my job is the, or my goal as the chief. I want to be able to get officers through their career right. I don't want to. It's expensive to have to hire and train and I'd much rather retain people. And so if we can prevent these problems from arising where they feel like they have to leave the job, then we we certainly want to do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, cause it's more than just about money, right, or being happy in the job. It's like feeling like you're growing in the position, right, cause that's especially for millennials. You know, being how long you guys have been on. Have you seen a difference in the recruit, the mentalities you know over the years? Because it seems like you had this tough type individual. You know, probably the decades before Gen X, maybe, maybe even the boomer generation, where it's a little bit more tougher. You keep your feelings on the inside, you just put your head down, you just do your job and you don't talk about it much. But the millennial generation and the ones behind it, are you seeing that they need this encouragement, pat on the back? Is there a little bit more of that that is required now than it was before? Or is the personality of a police officer just kind of typically alpha male types that they don't really do that?
Speaker 1:I think we've seen a change.
Speaker 3:I think it's a little of both. So naturally I think we are seeing some that are those type A personalities. They're just, they were born for the job, right, but then at the horrific sites right, dead people, kids that are victimized. Back when I started in the mid-90s so 1996 is when I first started as a police officer that was the culture. You suppress it, you keep it down, you're a tough guy. But now we've seen a 180 with that culture.
Speaker 3:Change with peer support groups and encouraging counsel. Change with peer support groups and encouraging counseling yeah, that is a change. But I think naturally you're going to see the guys that want to be SWAT cops or bomb techs or whatever. You're already going to have a percentage of those types, but we have seen the numbers change to where you do have to pat them on the back a little bit more, yeah, and recognition is huge. So that's one thing that I think both of our agencies do is anytime you know you got a life-saving award or a medal of merit or a commendation letter. So we're hyper-focused on paying attention to what our people are doing so we can recognize them and I think that means the world to them to have the chief or the sheriff personally, come up to him and give him an award and a little plaque they can put on their wall at home.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so how long have you been chief?
Speaker 1:Five years, march of 2020. And what'd you do before that? I was the deputy chief for about 18 months and then, previous to that, I was a captain and then, previous to that, a lieutenant.
Speaker 2:So I've come up through the ranks in st george so as like a captain, like what's the job role of the captain you're in charge of, like you're in charge of, so every department's structured a little bit differently, or an office, you know, in the sheriff's office, but um, so in my department you have officers and detectives, which are kind of the line staff.
Speaker 1:Then the next level up is sergeant, and sergeants work in detectives, they work in patrol. So varying levels are kind of your first line supervision. Then you have a lieutenant and then a captain Captains in the St George Police Department they're division commanders and so right now we have three divisions. We have patrol administration and special operations. We have a captain that oversees each of those divisions and they help with the budgeting. So when it comes time I can't budget for the entire department. It's far too big of a task and so.
Speaker 1:I have these captains that can help me with the budgeting, the administrative issues that come up, and then also there are a little bit more of the operations. Right and handle that.
Speaker 2:And then you have the deputy chief, which is just under me and then then me as the chief.
Speaker 3:So, and then for the sheriff's department, for the County, what is it? What does that structure kind of look like? Um, so, so I'm, uh, the elected sheriff, so I'm up every four years. I've been in a sheriff just over three and a half years now, but uh, for me I've got myself as the sheriff and then I have one under sheriff that that can sign my name and act as me if I'm not available, and then I have three division chiefs. So, unlike Chief Whitehead, I am statutorily obligated to run our county jail, which is a big undertaking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't envy the sheriff, that's the one area.
Speaker 2:I'll always say I'm glad you're the sheriff, the jailing is tough yeah the one area I'll always say the jail.
Speaker 3:I'm glad you're the sheriff. The jailing is a tough is it's tough, yeah, so two. So I have 206 employees, but two-thirds of those are running jail operations, correction staff, um, but as far as the, the order, the structure, so I have the undersheriff, then I have three chiefs, so I have three separate divisions the patrol division, the corrections division, then a support division, which is support support division is like court security, transporting inmates, running the kitchen work crews. You'll see inmates picking up trash on the side of the road but, yeah, only a third of my employees you actually see out on the streets are detectives. With the drug task force, an example. So we use inmate labor to cook meals, an example. So we use inmate labor to cook meals. We cooked 471,000 meals last year a lot of food.
Speaker 3:Luckily I have the average cost per meal to $1.85. Nice, and that's for it's like a, it's a mini city, so anything you'll need on the outside, we have to provide medical services. So, even though by default I'm a law enforcement agency right, but I have. But I have 12 full-time nurses, I have three licensed clinical social workers, I have a contracted doctor things that you wouldn't think that I would have my hands in, but I do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And so how many inmates are there in any given time?
Speaker 3:at the About 460 is where we like to keep it. Anything higher than that. We're doing an expansion now a $25 million expansion. That's going to add about 85 more beds with growth. So when that when the jail was first built in 1998, so about a 500-bed facility it was $10.5 million to build in 1998. We're doing an 80-bed expansion, we're about $25 million. But in 1998, when the jail was built, the idea was the county size. We would house about 100 county inmates but then we would house 350 state inmates. So the state is paying the county to house inmates that have been sentenced to the state prison. So it's a revenue generator for the county. Now, 25 years later, those roles have reversed. Now I have 350 county inmates and only 100 state inmates. So that's just something I can point to. With the growth over the years that we're having to house a lot more county inmates.
Speaker 2:So, um, thinking about that, how, how that growth? I could go a couple of different directions. Let me take a step back though, Furthers. Where, when did you decide? What'd you do before you ran to be the sheriff?
Speaker 3:I've worked for the sheriff's office since 99. I started with Washington city in 1996, which Washington city in 1996 is about. What Lavergan is now? Yeah, so uh, in 19,000 people.
Speaker 3:Yeah, ish, not much. Um, it was a big deal when we had an Albertsons come in, yeah, so, yeah, uh, well, or Walmart is that used to just be all desert bushes out there. I remember chasing a few guys through there, but before Walmart was even there. Um, so I started, uh, in corrections with the sheriff's office. That's kind of where everybody starts working in the jail. But I had previous patrol experience, so I only worked in the jail for 14 months, but during that time I at least received my corrections certification. So in law enforcement there's different certification depending on what route you go. So then I went out to patrol in 2000 with the county. I worked as a sergeant in patrol and investigations, then a lieutenant over investigations, then I was the chief deputy over patrol for four years and then, when Sheriff Pulsifer he ended up getting sick with cancer and needed to retire, he made me the undersheriff for about six weeks and then there was a special election and then I became the sheriff.
Speaker 2:Oh, nice yeah. So when's your election? You're elected every four years. You would have been just last year, right, or two years ago. Two years ago. Two years ago.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I'm just over two years in my first four year cycle. So next year would be campaign season, four-year cycle. So next next year would be campaign season. I would get sworn in again in january of 27 I'm 27, so was it was the?
Speaker 2:because I can't help but think did you anybody run against you?
Speaker 3:um, I did have one one of my lieutenants running against me in the special election. Uh, ended up getting about like 60 or sorry, 76 percent of the vote and that. So I didn't have anybody run against me in the primary, oh yeah okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 2:So, thinking about, because you don't have to run for office, you get appointed by the mayor, right, correct, yeah.
Speaker 3:And so he's every day yeah every day.
Speaker 2:He's running for your job all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's so. The way it works is I'm appointed by the mayor at the majority vote of the city council. Okay, and so you know, if the city council were to come in and decide they wanted to go a different direction technically, I think, and every city has a little bit different it's maybe written in their ordinance a little bit differently, but, yeah, a majority council vote could potentially have me removed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you're kind of answering to the people as well as the ones who are appointing you, right? Because if the city's upset with how the policing is being done, they're going to go to the city council. The city council is going to be looking at the sheriff like, hey, are you actually doing this? Is this matching? Yeah?
Speaker 1:the chief. Yeah, that's a lot of times there's worries I think some people have about having an unelected police agency there there. I know there's a lot of debate out there about this I mean, you can argue both sides, I think.
Speaker 2:I think you probably easily argue both sides, sure?
Speaker 1:so it's almost like and I think there are pros and constables. But you know, like I said, I think, saint george, traditionally, if you look at the way we've policed, uh, our, our political, uh representatives don't really get involved in our department. We've been very fortunate in that they hire I feel like they hire good police chiefs. Now I'm probably one of the weaker leaks out of this Right.
Speaker 1:But they've picked good people and typically those chiefs have put in good administrations. They, you know, they run a very tight ship. They have, you know, the officers do a very good job and so we really haven't had. I look, I have some colleagues and friends in other states and other cities and man, I hear about the, especially when you start getting some politicians want favors or they want oh hey, my kid got arrested for this and we got to fix that Crazy. That's where sometimes it gets a little difficult, it gets dicey.
Speaker 2:So yeah, but don't deal with that here, thank goodness? Yeah, I agree, and as we continue to grow, things like that, you know, are going to come up Eventually. Things like that come up, but you just got to deal with them as they come around. So, as the residential growth number has continued to grow, you know what? What have you had to like adapt? So like adapting and changing to managing. You know you have I need this many officers on their beat. You know patrol officers out in the public. You know special operations. You have all these different things that you might need that you didn't, at one point in time you didn't need, and now you do need.
Speaker 2:Where are we at in that growth? Do you feel like we're still catching up for our growth, cause it happens so quickly? Do you feel like um, staffing and having the different departments that you need as we grow? Do you feel like we're keeping up with that? Um, not to say that it's like, well, if we're not keeping up, it's your fault, but uh, but just thinking of like you're you're going to be making progress, right, but just thinking of like you're going to be making progress right. We're not going to always, we'd like to be in front of it all the time. But are we actually in front of it or are we still kind of playing catch up? Since this last big residential growth boom, at least in St George or countywide, I know county, you know the county management has gotten quite big.
Speaker 3:We're constantly looking at the needs of the community and right now countywide, I feel pretty comfortable. I think we've added to the Drug Task Force over the years. We've added to the gang unit over the years. So as problems arise we are reacting and we're suppressing a lot of those, particularly on the gang side. So in the 2000s we had a lot of Hispanic gangs. We end up. We don't have that issue anymore right now. Like our focus is outlaw motorcycle gangs that are trying to claim Washington County as their territory. But anytime we get a flare up, our suppression efforts have been really good to where it hasn't become a real big problem. But we have to continue that suppression because once it becomes a problem it's really hard to walk that back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it seems like you let it take root and then it's like you let a little bit of weeds in the yard and then all of a sudden it's a ton and then it's a lot more difficult to kind of put it down. So what do you think on the St George side?
Speaker 1:Well, that's what I think has really been great about you look at law enforcement generally in the county wide. About you. Look at law enforcement generally in the county wide.
Speaker 1:You know we participate very well together and we have a task force that we can focus on some of these, because crime doesn't really respect boundaries, right yeah right crime that's happening in saint george is going to bleed over into other communities, and so that's where it's been great to have other supportive agencies in the in the county that want are willing to come together and focus on these. You know task forces are really. You're able to do a lot more work when you all put your heads together and collaborate.
Speaker 2:Joint operations yeah.
Speaker 1:St George. I think we're doing better. You know, if you would have asked me this just right around COVID 2021, 2022, st George, I felt like we were needing some resources and we've hired. So I actually looked this up and prepped for this. So we have hired. Let's see, I thought I had 41 positions since 2021. Now that's sworn in civilian throughout our department, but that's that's significant growth in our department and so that's not only been keeping up but also catching up, I think, from where we got behind and uh, I think you have churn as well, you have turnover as well, so it's not just like adding to it.
Speaker 2:You have some people that are leaving and you got to fill those slots. Plus, you need to add some on top of it turnovers probably about 10 is kind of where where we seem to see it.
Speaker 1:So not not too bad, um, but, yeah, so it's. But I think we're getting caught up now. We still have some areas I feel like we need to do a little bit better in, but we're. I don't think we're having to grow at the pace we have the last three years, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, uh, interesting thing about saint george is we've got a lot sometimes where other cities and sometimes I'll use a comparison like the Provo city, provo city uh, most of their city is just all smashed together, right, yeah, um, st George, we're kind of unique in that we have a lot of open space and I'm I'm kind of whining about this. The sheriff's like, oh, welcome to my world. But we have this open space between several of our communities and subdivisions in the city, and so one of the big things we try and focus on in public safety is response times and make sure that we have appropriate response times, especially for those high priority calls. And it becomes challenging. Most of our population, most of our calls, is in the downtown area, but now we've got down along SR7, we've got several large communities.
Speaker 1:Sometimes our response times get a little bit long and so we've done some redistricting with our area adjustments, trying to stage officers more appropriately, as we've seen this growth. But again, it's trying to keep up with those changes and always looking to find ways to be more efficient.
Speaker 2:I didn't think about this until just now. If there's anybody that can actually has like a right to complain about the traffic, it's the police officers. Like, if I get a call and I got to go, I got to go to the on Dixie Drive and it's three thirty Right, it's like, even with your sirens going, you know you're trying to get through, you got that median in the middle, you can't go left or right, you can't get past. You know, if anybody has a right to complain, to be you guys. So what, what? I mean, what's that feeling on? You know, as traffic's gone, you know staging officers. I guess that that's kind of a challenge. But, um, do you feel like there's there's a actual issue with the traffic? Do?
Speaker 1:you really, I think anybody that lives in the area or visits here for more than I don't think I don't think it's that big of a deal so because I'm from southern california, so like that's the difference is what you know, what context you bring now if I'm from the la area or even vegas or salt lake.
Speaker 1:Yeah, our traffic, but, but for us, a city our size, there's congestion issues, you know, and I think, uh, they're, they're. At some point we're hopefully going to be able to expand. I know there are a lot of roads in the works, some arterial roadways that we probably need to help alleviate some of the congestion. But even taking aside just the volume of the traffic, the concern I get is the inattentiveness, the selfishness, the distracted driving. I mean, we see it all the time.
Speaker 1:I drive an unmarked vehicle, right, and if I stopped every person that I saw on a cell phone from the office to my house, which is a 15-minute commute, it'd take me two hours to get from one place to the other, because people are, just. I mean, we've become so connected through these electronic devices, right, I mean we've become so connected through these electronic devices, right, and now the cars they drive themselves, and even the car I drive, it's not a self-driving, but it'll keep me in the lanes, you know, it vibrates and the steering wheel adjusts, and so now we think, oh, the car's going to do it for me, so maybe I can just start doing this task or that task yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we see that.
Speaker 2:I was looking at my map, I was looking at directions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that to me is the bigger problem over the volume of the traffic is just the oh it's turning, I know it's going to turn red, but I can just sneak through and you know, then the other traffic they'll let me go, and the red light runners, it's. You know, we see that a lot yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot of traffic. We have a lot of traffic accident type stuff, which is unfortunate, especially with kids on bikes too, and I know there's. You know I have this. I have the love for the bike lanes and things like that, but that becomes a really, a really difficult thing for you guys to manage is is, you know, seeing so many pedestrians on the side, but you can already tell like drivers are already distracted with other drivers, much less pedestrians that you can't really see as much. So do you feel like you know, are there some different ways that we could do bike lanes and things like that, that that we haven't thought about?
Speaker 1:Personally, I think in St George, uh, and maybe it's Utah generally, and some of this goes back to, like the original settlers, right, I've heard, and I don't know if this is even the truth, but when they originally platted out St George City, if you look at downtown St George, the roads are really wide, and I heard that was so that they could turn the horse carriages or the buggies or whatever the horse-drawn vehicles, so they could turn them around and not have to back them up.
Speaker 1:And so we've got these really wide roads. Well, you see, with vehicular traffic, the wider the road, the more inviting it is to go faster speeds, right, and so you could have a really wide road. In fact, we see this at times, some of our wide residential streets, and the speed limit is, of course, only 25, but people feel like, oh, the road, the road's wide, and so, and so then you start introducing kids with, you know, playing on the on the sidewalks or playing in the street, even sometimes all these electric devices now and those get in the street and and it just becomes so you start having these conflicts where sometimes I worry that maybe we need to look at doing some things differently with you.
Speaker 1:You know separating in our roadways. You know pedestrians and bicyclists from the motoring public, because it does sometimes it just gets.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It seems like there's just a lot of points, of a lot of areas where there can be mistakes made, where, if I think, maybe some design could be looked at differently. Look, I want to be able to drive my car right, yeah, and I think a lot of people, but there's also a good segment of our population and that seems to be growing. A lot of people want to bike and they want to commute on things other than in cars, and so I think we have to be somewhat open to those needs in our community.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm in favor of, uh, having downtown slow down. Like, how do we get downtown St George to slow down and increase the density? Because I think there there's a, there's this community, a collective community element that comes in, is like, as you get more dense but you put them into, let's say, the apartments out in Washington, off telelegraph or I mean even some aspects of desert color. You know, looking at desert color in the mixed housing types where you have higher density and low density, single family, you know townhomes, you have this big mix of different stuff in there, but in downtown it's just homes and then you have commercial where, if we could get more dense and get people walking around and have have a, a, a slowing the traffic down down the Boulevard, narrower streets, like that kind of a thing slows, slows traffic down.
Speaker 2:Um, I think it builds community involvement when you can see your neighbors and you can talk to the people that are around you and not so stuck in. You know social media and all the getting people outside. I think. I think there's a lot of value to that within the community. But it makes um, the higher density makes policing difficult too, you know, and so and I hear, you know, I hear a lot of people speak to the contrary.
Speaker 1:They're like you know, I want to have my big lots and I want my wide streets and I want to be able to drive my full sized, whatever the truck is. And so I get it. And I don't know that anybody's necessarily right or wrong, but some of that's where I think these difficult decisions fall back on our elected officials to decide. How does this city look moving into the future, because the growth it's going to grow. How do we want that growth to look?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what do we want it to look like?
Speaker 1:And then sometimes us as public safety, we're caught trying to help keep people safe, you know, in inappropriate ways. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense. So if we look at so you talked about, like the motorcycle gangs, what are some of the other? Like you know, I'm I'm really kind of concerned. I have young kids, nine and under three, three boys, and so I've seen a lot of articles about abductions. I think there's been a couple just in the last couple of weeks of like an attempted abduction and then one where a girl was abducted and she was recovered like an hour later, which kudos to whoever the department was that did that. Are you seeing there's a rising trend in certain criminal activity just in this moment of time, Because obviously in some years gang activity is going to be more prevalent and in other years other types of activity are going to be more prevalent. Are you seeing any specific criminal trends that at least the public should just be aware of and be more vigilant towards, Because you guys can't do it, you can't be everywhere always.
Speaker 3:I think with growth you're naturally going to see crime increase. We live in a low crime county, right, so we're doing a good job. But I don't think there's there's any magic bullet that's going to say oh we're, we're going to just cut crime from growing with with growth. But yeah, one thing I pointed to is, you know, 15 years ago, st george city, washington county, whatever we, we might have a homicide every two or three years and now we're having three to five in a year. So aggravated assaults have gone up. So those are some things that I can see. That man, in the last 15 years we're seeing crimes against people to the aggravated assault side up to homicide. That has increased with the growth. But when you go from 55,000 to over 200,000 in the county, that's just part of what comes with growth. Thousand to over 200,000 in the county yeah, that's just part of what comes with growth.
Speaker 2:People coming from other states that you know came from high crime neighborhoods and maybe some gang involvements and things like that. Yeah, the um, the. I know we kind of have imported crime right Cause I've heard, especially like in the national parks and like the parking areas for the state parks and stuff like that, where they'll have, you know, gangs come up from Vegas and then they'll, they'll hit a bunch of cars all at once and I feel like a few years ago I was hearing that quite often. I don't know if that's is that trend continued? Is that still something that you guys are battling on a regular basis? It?
Speaker 3:is. I saw I caught like a traveling crime wave. They're usually from other states or Vegas. You know, being close proximity to Vegas doesn't help us out in that regard, but they'll. They'll come into the neighborhood, they'll go to a gym parking lot or a parks no candy gets hit. You know, busting windows out. They're looking for credit cards. They'll immediately take those credit cards to Walmart, get prepaid visas. So then the money's clean and they'll or retail thefting. Yeah, just traveling through with I-15 coming through, it brings everything with big drug loads. You know, 60,000 fentanyl pills or 30 pounds of meth in one car. That's crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you know, the fortunate thing, kind of going back to like the people crimes and the homicides and the ag assaults and those types of things. One thing that I think is still cool. Though you look at you compare us to any other community or county or metropolitan area throughout the country for the you know, similar 200,000 population, I still feel like we have a relatively low crime rate. Oh for sure, you know. And so again, hats off to our officers and deputies, our communities that are, you know, they don't let that stuff fly. We really are still very fortunate here. I think the biggest thing in the city that we see are, you know, the drugs are becoming an issue. Unfortunately, property crimes are always, always, seem to be an issue. A lot of those are just crimes of opportunity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, some people Amazon thefts.
Speaker 1:I still have family members I still have family members that leave their house and go somewhere and leave their doors unlocked. You know it's like why do you do my?
Speaker 3:I deal with that, with the small communities like enterprise. Yeah, you know they're, they're. They leave their doors unlocked, their cars unlocked, and so when one of these traveling crime sprees goes to a community like that, they get hit really hard. Do you hammer um?
Speaker 2:yeah, the yeah it's it's it, and so it's, it's kind of. It's kind of one of those things is you. The only way we learn as a community is being aware of when it's happening, Right, and so, uh, when I, when I look online and you look at you know what's the crime rate in Southern Utah, some, some websites will give us an A, you know an A, or an A minus or something like that. And then some will give us a C, like I, I I sifted through so many different websites, like trying to be like okay, what's the number, and then I found the Bureau of Criminal Identification and so I was able to search by County and find like hey, here's the crimes by offense, and then it goes back. You can go back like five years. Yeah, Um, do you guys have like a, a public reporting, to kind of give like here's the data so that the public can be aware of stuff like that?
Speaker 1:So all of our numbers I think statewide get reported to the state. You can go to the state website and you can look at each. You can look at it broken down by county, by municipality. There's different criteria years or months or days and all that data is available on the Utahgov website Because we all report our information to the state and then it gets uploaded there. So that's kind of nice. So people throughout the state can go to and look at crime data the one thing to keep in mind sometimes crime stats drive me crazy because it's like duis they were driving me crazy because I'm like yeah, so it's it's subjective number one, but number two, uh.
Speaker 1:So say, last year St George arrests 1,000 people for DUI and we realize that you know we probably got a problem. And so the next year I take two officers and say I want you guys to go focus on DUIs for the whole next year. What does it look like? When they start arresting people, they're going to arrest more people, right? So now it goes up to 2,000 arrests a year. So it looks like we've had this huge increase in DUIs.
Speaker 2:Well, it's not that there's more drunk drivers on the road You're just catching more, you're catching them more, and so that's what happens a lot of times.
Speaker 2:That's what I was looking at. I was looking at the data. I was like this is either telling me one of two things is we were doing a poor job at it before and now control, and it's it's potentially getting away from us. But even if you look back, like simple assaults is like the best number and this this is on that state website that I'm looking at you know there was uh 15, 15,000 simple assaults in 2020, uh 17,021, 17,022, just over 18,000. So we're like growing, but not really significantly. You know, year over year, the 2024 was barely different than 2023. So it's like there's not really one single category that I can see is like, hey, we have this like spike, spike in in criminal behavior, and so that's where I'm looking at. I'm like OK, but I don't know, is this just because this is how many officers we can help to process this many deals, or is it that this, this many offenses, is just you know, what would they have?
Speaker 3:Probably a little of both, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's probably the other thing to consider when you look at the crime stats. You brought up kidnapping, right? Um, actual non uh, the where someone kidnaps and abducts an unknown person very rare here, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's normally like somebody who knows somebody it's usually a family member, but remember those also include custodial interference cases and there's a lot of others that get lumped into that crime because they can't have a crime category for every single crime scenario a lot of these, they lump them together and so where it may look, you know, I think in saint george I was looking at the data and it had increased, you know, looked significant, went from like 30.
Speaker 1:We were kind of 30 on average and then it's now it's up to like 50 this last year. And some of that is, you know, going back without sifting through the data and saying, is that like I didn't bring my kid home at the prescribed time, when the divorce decree or the custodial agreement says otherwise, that may fall under that criteria. And so is it really kidnappings or are there other things in play that you know, sometimes we get a little bit worked up over the actual data when we don't have all the information.
Speaker 2:I think it's a it's a tough thing too to have. The conversation too is like we're we're having a podcast, trying to trying to, you know, flush out some of these things. It's like, well, I don't want to like panic the community and be like, hey, yeah, there's, there's a bunch of kidnappings happening, right, so I can see how they're. Like there's this balance between you don't want to stoke panic and fear over things that are happening, and it's a balance of okay, but how do we disclose and make, make the public aware of some of these things? You guys do a lot of outreach. I know you have a lot of different programs to bridge the gap between the law enforcement and the community. Maybe help me understand as somebody who's not from here. Like they're thinking about moving to Southern Utah. Like how does the policing community, both in the sheriff and St George, how do they get involved in the community? What are some of those programs? So for us, we do the sheriff's like I just keep the prisoners in the prison.
Speaker 2:I just don't let the prisoners out.
Speaker 3:We do have some unique things, like our recovery court. We used to call it drug court, so that's something that the sheriff's office is involved in. So not only are we tackling the drug problem by providing deputies in the drug task force that are going after the dealers and the users, but we're also in the long-term rehab process, which a drug court compared to or recovery court. We're calling it um more politically correct Right. Uh, clarification though right, it's like it's not just about the drug.
Speaker 2:It's about like, how do we get these people that are?
Speaker 3:how do we get them employed and stable and take care of themselves and their family? So it's it's a year long program. Um, we usually run about 60 clients in there, but I have four full-time deputies that that's all they do is helping that program for the long-term success. So the benefit to me lower the likelihood of having to take up jail space too right, and any program that will help somebody get on the straight and narrow I'm going to support. But that's one one way that's more of a community oriented. That's just not taking people to jail or writing tickets that we care about the community. We want to help you in your recovery and it's um drug court or recovery court. Compared to private in-house treatment, it has a 30% higher success rate. So that's good. The badge means something um, instant sanctions, so if you mess up you're going to go spend the night in jail. Yeah, so that's that's what makes that program successful.
Speaker 2:And I want to. I want to we're going to come back to St George's programs, but there's there's been a lot of conversation, especially in my demographic and the millennial group, is that it's like the DARE program when we were kids didn't necessarily have the results that it was intended to have. Right Is lowering drug usage over time, right, and so the war on drugs seems to be this never-ending war. It's like this endless battle. And so, from your perspective, looking at like the users and the dealers, do you find that you're putting more attention on really trying to skip the user and be more focused on how do we, how do we stop the, the dealers, how do we try to, you know, cut off the, the distribution of it, or is it is it, is it a balance where you're like, well, I mean, you're on meth right now and you have some on your pocket, in your pocket, I have to take you, you in.
Speaker 3:So our drug task force that is, their focus is finding the dealers is a deal, and they'll. They'll usually, you know, have multiple instances before they make an arrest.
Speaker 2:So they're, they're, uh building as much of a yeah, so they don't have time to deal with users, they just don't.
Speaker 3:They have. They have plenty to do just going after dealers so.
Speaker 2:So do you think that maybe the punishment could you use a bigger stick? Do you think, like using a bigger stick would be more of a deterrent?
Speaker 3:We used to have a bigger stick, so was it 2014-ish JRI? So this kind of gets a little frustrated with the justice system in general. So several years before Utah looked at it, california had done it. So Utah could have said, hey, we see that California basically decriminalized a lot of your hard drug possession. So meth, methamphetamine, fentanyl, cocaine, the hard stuff, pretty much everything but weed right. So they took those from felonies to misdemeanors, right. So they took those from felonies to misdemeanors. So now the officer literally has, if you have meth on you, the officer could decide to write you a class A misdemeanor citation and send down your way rather than a trip to jail. So that's, that's a little bit of frustration. On the bigger stick, like I mentioned with the drug court or recovery court program, is there needs to be consequences and those consequences need to be immediate to get people's attention. Needs to be consequences and those consequences need to be immediate to get people's attention. So, um, prior to JRI. So the justice reinvention initiative readjustment, justice, reinvestment Okay Initiative.
Speaker 3:So there were some good things about that, some funding for a treatment centers, rehab facilities, so that's.
Speaker 2:That's a good post, jri Post, you know uh criminal activity.
Speaker 3:So initially, when JRI came in, our drug court participant numbers went way down because there wasn't like a zero to five prison sentence hanging over their head. So a lot of people go into that program because it's either you go to this program or you're going to prison. Well, that prison incentive, I guess, went away and so we saw our numbers reduced. So now you have to have that third possession charge for it to be enhanced to a felony. So over the last four years or so people have caught up to that. So they're on their third or fourth possession charge. So now they're looking at felony, now they're looking at potential prison time. So now our drug court numbers. We have people waiting to get in to that program now.
Speaker 2:So and all the while, all the while, it was like three times more resources to get them to the same point, as if we would have just started right out of the gate. You got to go to jail four times for for you to start taking it serious.
Speaker 3:So that's a little bit of frustration there. Even the courts I've seen so on a on a County inmate judges are typically can sentence that individual to 365 days in a county jail. Historically, anything over that they would go to prison on like a zero to five or a five to 10 or life, whatever it may be. So now, now, if a judge sentences somebody on a zero to five, once the judge sentenced them, then it's 100% completely in the board of pardons hands Well with a lack of prison space. Even with the new prison, they outgrew it before they even moved into it. The local judges are being frustrated because they're doing a zero to five. They're wanting to see this person spend some time in prison while they're out in five or six months because the board of pardon got to make that decision. So just just last week I had, uh, I had a judge, uh, so they can stack charges so they can do three, 65 for this one, three, 65 for this one.
Speaker 3:So I've had a local judge, because of frustration with the prison, sentence somebody to County jail for 1250 days, um, well beyond the 365 we usually see. So that's, that's um, that's kind of an issue for county tax dollars can. Now the state, who has a much bigger pot for funding, would pay for that person to be in prison. But now this judge, out of frustration with the system, sends them to county jail for two or three years. That's on the local washington county taxpayer to fund that. Yeah. So man, it's kind of got it it's.
Speaker 2:It's interesting, though, because it's these little ins and outs, because you know what the the idea that it's like, okay, well, we just need to get these people help, yeah. That's like, well, yeah, but they don't want help. And so if you don't give them the carrot or the stick, it's like, well, if you want help, we'll give you help, right, but if you don't want help, we still have to have some other avenue to where you're not continuing to degrade the public health and safety of the people around you. Because, you know, no matter how you look at it, somebody who's swept up in meth or any any of the hard drugs they ultimately will result to. I got to do whatever it takes to get my fix, which goes to stealing and, you know, whatever it might be definitely impacting the the greater community. So it's not this victimless crime and it might be once or twice, but it's the slippery slope that these hard drugs slide people down on right. It's like, how do you?
Speaker 3:I would dare say most of our property crimes are because the, the addicts, are trying to feed their habit.
Speaker 1:They're not working nine to five jobs, yeah, so they've got to find a way, yeah, to to feed their habit, so yeah and I think we're really lucky that we haven't had, you know, our we haven't done what other states have done, where they've completely bought into this complete legalization.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's. You look at the problems they have, you know, the needle dispensaries and all that stuff. It, oh my gosh, it's chaos in some of these states that have done that and so luckily we didn't get to that point. But even with the JRI, they're starting to look at maybe making some adjustments. But the whole thing I think from my perspective with JRI is I think in theory the program works, but there wasn't enough. They didn't have enough resources in place before they pulled the trigger right, they just all of a sudden pulled the trigger and changed the statutes and there's not resources, there's not places where people can go and get the counseling, the help with addiction and all of those things, and a lot of that fell back on the county and the county taxpayers and I think that was a lot of frustration that we experienced, probably more so the sheriff felt that it was frustrating.
Speaker 2:So do you think, do you think there's like this room, because I know there's a lot of uh, I hear some negativity and I I mean even me personally I think like privatizing jails, I'm like that just seems like the like the easiest way to just slide off into this is a profitable thing. So we're going to stuff as many you know criminals in there as we can as a private organization. So how do you guys feel about this private jailing I know it's a tough one, it gets really complicated because, we're still paying for it.
Speaker 3:And if they're a private company, their goal is to make money. So quite often in the can and across the country we see so we have jail standards we have because we have state inmates, we have the state coming, we have the state come and do inspections. So the private prison, their goal is to make money, so their standards are going to be lessened and typically they end up having a lot of issues. The feds will come in and shut them down or oversee their operations. So I don't I mean again, we're still paying for it. So I think it would the private prisons would end up costing the tax dollars more, because at least we're not trying to make money off of it, we're just trying to break even, right? Yeah?
Speaker 2:You're legitimately just trying to say you're a bad person, you have to go in this place over here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Whatever the cost is, we'll cover it but, I'm not trying to make money off the deal.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:So I kind of look at it.
Speaker 1:I don't really couldn't weigh much in on the private jails, but I look at it as maybe a different perspective going. How would I feel about privatizing police? I mean, to me I see a lot of red flags and a lot of concerns with that.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, a lot of people have private securities and things like that, right Businesses and I think security is one thing, but if you privatize police, some of these government organizations that traditionally have been the role of the government, and now we start looking at privatization, I don't know. I think I'd want to do a lot of digging and research before I commit to any of these.
Speaker 3:There would be way too much opportunity for corruption. If, again, you're a business and your end goal is to make money and your private police officer can decide to write somebody a ticket or not, like we're not making money off a citation, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's just well then, the elected system, like private police, seems to me like a we've.
Speaker 2:We've gone so far off the rails like there's, there's, there's a example, but but thinking, but thinking of like okay, well, how do we make these analogies, like, how do we, how do we solve the carrot and the stick approach? You know, do we make the prisons less desirable? So it's like the 365 is really bad, but I, I just I see enough of like life behind bars, like documentaries where I'm like it seems pretty crappy yeah, it seems like not a place.
Speaker 3:even, uh, even, with the you know, extreme um, um, not extreme. Well, continuous inspections. We have simple things like I ha, I have a dietician that plans all of our meals because 20 years ago an inmate got too fat in prison and they sued the prison, and so so I have, so I have to hire a dietician.
Speaker 2:So their caloric intake is just so much to where they're not going to lose, or it's it's it's that sheriff Wasn't there, that sheriff in in Arizona and he was like everybody gets a ham sandwich, and then it was like in the desert.
Speaker 3:What was that? Yeah, the tent city. The tent city, it's whatever.
Speaker 1:Sheriff.
Speaker 2:Arpaio.
Speaker 3:Arpaio, joe Arpaio.
Speaker 2:Joe, yeah, sheriff, joe, maricopa County.
Speaker 3:So he had. You know, most of the citizens really liked it Cause he had them.
Speaker 2:You know, wear pink jumpsuits and tent cities and he'd always say if our, if our military can live in tents these inmates can live in tents From a marketing perspective. If you're like I'm going to, I'm going to market the stick approach. Like if you want to go into jail? This is going to suck, you know. At least he had it.
Speaker 3:There's a balance, cause at the same time he he was the sheriff in the country that had the most outstanding lawsuits against him because of some of that. So it's a balance, right. I mean just having your freedom taken away. You're in an 8x10 cell. We get to decide when you eat three meals a day, but restrictions. So we classify each inmate a level one through four, level one being the most severe. Like you're on a homicide charge, you're going to be a red jumpsuit and you're going to be in lockdown. So for 23 hours a day. And when you do get time to come out, you get to come out of your cell and be the only one in that section to watch a little bit of tv or walk around the day room type thing. Others, they can watch tv all day. They can rent movies on a tablet, they can buy shoes um, crazy instant coffee. So you know that that seems too much.
Speaker 2:We need to cut all that stuff out, Sheriff. What are we doing here?
Speaker 3:So those are the. Those are a state inmates that do they can read a book.
Speaker 2:Here you can read a book.
Speaker 3:So they're the ones doing our laundry, cooking our food, picking up weeds in the community. Um, it's, it's all. It's a management thing. You know like is it? Is it awesome that they're in jail and they can watch TV all day? Well, but it's a management tool for me Right. So if I can keep them occupied, you know, watching a movie or reading a book or some yard rec time, oh man, I could, I could go.
Speaker 2:I have so many. We can do a whole episode on policing because it's it's it's so fascinating to me, because there's, there's this. You know there's this history behind jails, right, there's a history between you know, you had the sheriff in the town keeping law and order, and then now you have these cities, right, as you described it, and then how do you keep order within the city? Cause you know being able to control it right. You order within the city because you know being able to control it right.
Speaker 2:You're not it's not a one-to-one right, there's only so many, it's like a 50 to one yeah, so it's you have to, and we've we've heard the stories, we've seen, you know, riots inside jails and how, how bad and sideways that can go, and that's, that's the. There's a hard red line. It's like we don't ever want to get anywhere close to that kind of thing. So how do you keep the peace inside? But we're going to keep. We're going to keep running. Um, I, I do want to talk about let's let's talk community outreach, like St George city, cause I know you guys do quite a bit, quite a bit of stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is where we really have tried to do better in the last several years and we try and partner not just with us I mean, initially it seems to start with us but we've also included a lot of our neighbors. You know, the sheriff's office often participates in a lot of these events and other police departments One of the things that I'm really proud of and I can't take any credit for it, but every summer, You're the chief, you can take credit for all of it.
Speaker 1:No, my job is to dish it all out and give credit where credit's due.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, Now the thought slipped me, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Our um.
Speaker 1:Spear Academy. Yeah, you know. So every year our SROs and they're the ones that actually brought this idea to fruition and work through it, but every, every summer, we do kind of a summer camp for kids that are transitioning from elementary to intermediate and then from intermediate to middle school. And because we found, as we were talking to our SROs, that sometimes those transitions are hard, and because we found, as we were talking to our SROs that sometimes those transitions are hard.
Speaker 1:Ros being resource officers right, yes, sros are school resource officers, and so they came with this proposal and it's like no, it totally makes sense. You know, how can we help kids develop this positive interaction, these opportunities to hang out with the cops, learn life skills, have fun? You know, we give them tours of our vehicles, give them canine demonstrations. They, you know, just really, it's a week of an opportunity to build some rapport and also teach them about transitioning and challenges they may face, who they can go and talk to if they do have challenges.
Speaker 1:And so we do a lot of community outreach throughout the year and it's, I think it's been very beneficial in our department. I could go on and list a lot of things that we we try to do, um, and and a lot of this. Again, I to my officers and my department, I say look, you guys bring the ideas, let's, let's try things out of the box, thinking any ways to involve the community. Because what happened, uh, particularly even before the whole George Floyd thing, um, back in 2016, there was the, the, was it trayvon martin?
Speaker 1:anyway, every five years over. You know, historically for the last several decades we've had these where there's a big flare-ups and people are mad at the police in those communities.
Speaker 1:And so we've tried to do it's like look, we've got to build those relationships so that when a shooting or a significant use of force happens, we've already built credibility with the community and let them kind of see what we do and who we are, so that they know that we're not just this invading force that's out there attacking people and doing things that they shouldn't be. And so we try and focus on a lot of community outreach in the city and build those relationships. And I don't feel like we necessarily need to. I don't think, you know, if we were to have an officer involved in a shooting or any of those types of incidents here, I think the community overall overall would come out and support us if we did the right thing. But I still think that it's important.
Speaker 1:People like to feel they, they, they like police and they love to be part, feel they, they like police and and they love to be part. Uh, feel like they're part and know what's going on. And so our social media, for example, we we try and have a very uh, a lot of social media influence. We're always trying to come up with new and creative ways to engage with the community. Some some things have worked. Some things haven't worked so well, but you know it's, it's just trying to find those ways to to again appeal to different and and you talk about millennials versus, you know, gen X, like myself, or or baby boomers, and all of those people different things appeal to them and so we try and look at different ways to engage those different groups and have those conversations.
Speaker 2:I would say, I would say, um, I would argue, you do need to do that only because there you don't ever know, like that outreach to the community, you don't know when that next event thing might happen, right, and and I think, uh, I would argue, I don't think most people do love the police, like they like the idea of a police, but then they get pulled over. They're like I freaking hate the police. You know what I mean, or you know, and so, um, but when they need them, right, they they're going, they want to be able to trust them in doing that, and so I think that community building, that community trust and being visible within the community, I think that is important. And one thing that's unique about Southern Utah versus, let's say, southern California, where I'm from, is and I didn't grow up there, so I wasn't a kid there and so I didn't necessarily like know a bunch of neighbors there.
Speaker 2:But even my, uh, my father-in-law, he worked in garden grove, but he didn't live in garden grove, he lived in orange, right, and it's, you know, it's an hour drive away, and so he wasn't actually like living in his community and patrolling in his community, right, and so it's kind of like the you. You know all the police officers here, right, you can't help but know them. You're going to see them out. You know my son, he sees the school resource officer and he's like, hey, how's it going? You know, and so there's that, that human interaction here locally, that they don't get in other areas, like, I would argue, even up in Utah County. They're at this point where you know they can have police officers that are living, you know, roughly around their, their precinct or their, is it precinct?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well. So yeah, Do you live in Utah County but you work for Salt Lake City police?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so so you're, you're completely kind of disconnect, disconnected from that community. And so there is this I don't know the police in my area where, here, you actually get to know who they are, you know their families that you know, you know about them, and so there's that natural trust that's kind of built in. But I think it's, I think it's super important. So it's good to see that you guys do it, cause I'm aware of all of it, but I think a lot of people coming from outside the area might not know, kind of, some of the things that we do. Um, okay, we're, I want to. I want to wrap on.
Speaker 2:Your least favorite topic is is this illegal immigration push from the president? Are you seeing because this is a very political slanted moment in time where it's like, hey, we're going to deport millions of people? I know for certain that there's illegal immigrants that are working in Washington County, and so what are some of the pressures that you've gotten just in the last couple of months from the state, or whether it's federal mandates, things like that have you gotten specific orders to say, hey, this is how we're handling the illegal immigration, or are you guys going on as business as usual? It's like this is what we've always done.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'll go first, go ahead, and I'll give the nonpolitical answer. And then I'll let the sheriff clean up if there's anything that he wants to add. So for us, I'm pro-immigration, by the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm, pro-immigration.
Speaker 1:So for us, nothing's changed With St George Police Department. We have always looked at look, immigration is. There are laws that govern immigration, but those are outside the realm of what we train our municipal police officers to be. There's all kinds of rules and different things. We have enough to keep us busy on keeping our community safe and, from my perspective, our number one priority should be community safety. And regardless of who is committing crimes in our community, they're the ones we should be holding accountable. And so if someone comes to our attention, regardless of who is committing crimes in our community, they're the ones we should be holding accountable. Yeah, and so if someone comes to our attention, regardless of who they are, regardless of their immigration status, we're going to hold them accountable for committing crimes. And now if there's some, some point during that process, it's discovered that they may be here illegally or undocumented, then we'll let Homeland Security come in and we'll let them deal with that. But that's not our officers aren't out asking for immigration papers. We're not conducting immigration checkpoints. That's not our role.
Speaker 1:The other thing you have to look at is one of my biggest fears. We talk, going back to some of these part one, crimes, the sex offenses, the assaults, those serious things, what we've seen in some areas, where you get this idea that the police are going to arrest you and haul you away for immigration issues, we actually find that those people are less likely to report crimes and so they actually become very soft targets and become victimized by all kinds of horrible things. And it would just break my heart Some of these little kids that it's not their fault, that maybe they've been brought here illegally, you know, and now they're being victimized or things are happening and so we want to try and keep as neutral as we can when it comes to the immigration. Now, certainly, if there's laws that we can enforce and we need to be part of that, we will.
Speaker 2:But we want to number. Our number one priority is community safety and keeping people safe, regardless of who it is. So there hasn't been like an added you know coming down from the governor's office or from you know a federal agency has come down and said, hey, we need you to, you know, focus some effort into this task that we are. You know the president's promised the country like, hey, we're going to deport all these illegals. So how do you, how do you, mobilize all law enforcement from the top down in every federal agency? You haven't. You haven't seen any different initiatives coming in and saying, hey, we're going to look at this, uh, and and focus on this area in a special operations task force or anything like that. No, from us nothing's changed.
Speaker 1:We continue to just hold, hold a crime perpetrators.
Speaker 2:It's still early.
Speaker 1:It's still early in the game too, and yeah, and there may be. I mean, at some point if there was a state statute or statutes that you know we've, that were enforceable. But right now it's just. I mean, you look across the country, even the circuit courts are disagreeing on who can, what the process is and who can be deported. I mean, look at all of these. Some are saying that they have to go through a process, Others are saying, no, that's pretty crazy. Right now there's just a lot of uncertainty out there, and so we keep our heads down and just focus on the— To Chief's point.
Speaker 3:Just to break it down, there's two systems when we talk about law. There's a federal system, there's a state system. So I, as the sheriff Chief Whitehead is the chief, and all of my deputies, his officers we can only enforce state law. We can't enforce federal law. So there's no nexus for us to enforce immigration rules. It's just not in our wheelhouse, and vice versa. A lot of federal agencies can't enforce state law. It's just not in our wheelhouse. And and vice versa, a lot of federal agencies can enforce state law. The biggest thing for me is the sheriff, particularly with jail operations, and I I want to support ice and their mission and president Trump and his goals and, and you know the, the line in for me is we, we, we need to be a country of law and order. I would agree with legal immigration if we can expedite that process.
Speaker 3:But we need to vet and know who's coming to our country. We need to know that they can provide for themselves and their family and they're going to be a benefit to our country. I'm all for that, 100%. There are some roadblocks there that I actually have an employee that's on a visa and she's been trying to get citizenship for years, paid tens of thousands of dollars to an attorney and she's no closer to getting full citizenship today than she was four years ago. It's frustrating. She's a great employee, um, legally working for me and all that. Uh, she can't, she couldn't be a certified deputy. She's civilian staff.
Speaker 3:But uh, for, for me, one of the one of the biggest changes is during the last uh administration. Um, for changes is during the last administration. So for years and years the jail had a contract with ICE to house some of their inmates for longer periods of time, usually just while their court process is going through or if there's an ICE hold and they have state charges. So they could stay in my jail for months or years if needed. Under the last administration they made that contract so difficult that I had to cancel the contract. It was putting way too much liability on me. They had hired two non-government entities to come in and do ridiculous inspections. Like they had to have their own entrance they had to have Like a specific soap.
Speaker 2:I heard like there was something like Special lotion lines. Special like crazy rules.
Speaker 3:I couldn't lock their inmates down if they were fighting, like without calling and getting their permission first, which I can't. I have to be able to manage the jail and part of that is being able to break up fights and lock inmates down immediately. So, anyway, we canceled the contract. So me and Salt Lake County were the only ones trying to deal with them long term. Now they can hold up to 48 hours, but that's not my rules, that's their rules.
Speaker 3:So now and when somebody was being booked into jail, we were always. They were always screening anybody coming into jail for immigration status. For immigration status and under the last administration, so they'd be booked in on state charges. Ice would look at them and, instead of putting a hold on them and deporting them, they'd give them a piece of paper called a promise to appear in court because they were asylum seeking. So then they were technically in the country, legally till their court date, but their court date's eight years down the road. Now what's happening is anybody that's coming in on state charges being screened and ice is actually putting a hold on them and deporting them. So anything from dui to domestic violence, simple assault, so that that's what I call the low-hanging fruit. So if you're in the country illegally and you end up in my jail, you're going to be deported so that's a difference.
Speaker 2:That is is happening, correct, that is happening. So I would say and from what I understood too, it was like from, uh, from Bush to Obama did the same thing Ice. Ice was basically non-effective during Obama and then when Trump was elected, it was ice was being effective, like they were allowed to do their job. And this is from an ice. I would talk to an ice agent. This is before. The podcast is probably 2019. Yeah, right, and he was like it was crazy.
Speaker 3:just from one administration to the next, it was like I was able to do my job and then I wasn't able to do my job exactly, which is just so crazy yeah talk to our local ice guys uh, had a lot to do, and then they woke up the next morning and had nothing to do. Yeah, for four years. And then this, this switch was flicked and then all of a, and then all of a sudden they're busy, busy.
Speaker 3:So initially they were doing it around and they have, you know, what we call like a hot list. So they're not just going and if you're illegal in the community and you're going to work and you're taking care of your family, there's nothing that's putting you on the radar. You're going to be here for a long time. Yeah, we're going after the criminals. Yeah, here for a long time, we're going after the criminals. So we literally have files of people that we know that are illegal in the country, that have been convicted of serious offenses sex offenses, homicides and those are on our hot list. Those are who we are proactively. I'm having my deputies work with eye, shoulder to shoulder, to go and round up that element in our community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and those are the ones too that you know if ICE comes to us and they have a warrant, an arrest warrant for somebody, those we're not going to turn our backs on.
Speaker 1:Look, let me tell you this we have a lot of. We have good federal partnerships here with all of the three-letter acronyms, and you know they're great partners down here. And one of the things that's been really frustrating to me lately is you see these videos, particularly back east and in some of the states, where you have these ICE employees going in and they're trying to arrest a person and you've got all these people coming out and trying to interfere with the arrest. That's criminal and if we ever had an operation like that and they requested assistance because they felt like there was propensity for violence, we would certainly go in there and if people interfered they would be arrested by our officers, because that's not we let them do their thing. But you know there are some people in our community that if they come to our attention and they're committing crimes and their warrants for their arrest, then they will be arrested.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, makes sense, it's. It's a crazy time. It's a crazy time and as we grow, I know there's going to be more and more challenges. Um, but um, I was. This was the last question, because then we can wrap, because it's it's three o'clock now and I appreciate you guys giving me an hour on this. We, we can talk about a lot of different stuff, yeah, but, uh, what, what do you feel like your officers like, need, like, is it like a vending machine? Like, is there something that you're like man, our guys is it? I think they all just got new weapons at st george city. They all got new, new guns. Like, is there, is there something that you guys know that you're like man? If I could give this to my police officers, I'm trying to. I'm speaking to the, the wealthy individuals that I know are listening to this podcast right now. It's like I want to donate to the, to the police force of the station. What do you guys? You guys are getting a new police station. You're moving into the old city hall, so yeah, we're.
Speaker 1:we we're getting remodeled, so we'll remodel our current building and the old city hall. So we'll actually have two buildings.
Speaker 2:Do they need like?
Speaker 1:a gym down there. So that is one of the things that we're looking at and we would have to budget to fund that. You know, there are those types of things. Here's the hard thing. If there were people out there that were interested, they could certainly reach out to me. What do is look through our budget and of the items that we had to cut, maybe that weren't high enough on the priority list, I would start there, um, but as far as people, whether they can you know, monetarily they can donate or not I think just recognizing our officers out in the community, thanking them for the job that they do, uh, I'll tell you what makes my day when someone offers to buy me lunch. You know, it may not seem like a lot, uh, and sometimes some officers feel, like you know, they don't want people giving them something based on who they are, and so they may decline. But I always tell my officers it's like you know, maybe you should, should allow that what did trump say?
Speaker 2:he's like if he give you a punt, if they give you a putt, you pick up your ball and you go to the next hole. We're just talking about the plane you got you, thank them and you pick up your ball.
Speaker 1:But I think back to the recognition that the sheriff talked about earlier on in the show. Sometimes we just all need a little pat on the back, yeah, you know, and I think the more we can just really promote our police and thank them for the job that they do and be willing to help out. When you know things are tough, I think that's really great. But certainly if people want to donate, we actually have a donation account at the police department that if people want to come in they can donate. If they have a pet project maybe, hey, your next canine that you have to purchase we want this money to go towards canine or canine supplies. We have a shelter that we operate and it gets very costly. We want this to go towards the shelter needs, and so we certainly would be open to any of those donations. Or someone may just want to come in and say, hey, here's some money, do with it what you want, and so I'll let the sheriff so in my world, so statutorily the sheriff shall manage all search and rescues in the county.
Speaker 3:So search and rescue is a big part of my world. Yeah, countywide Zion National Park even.
Speaker 2:That was part of one. It's one of the other questions I want to talk about. That was part of one. It's one of the other questions.
Speaker 3:I want to talk about. There's some give and take there. So, anyways, we have about 100 volunteers and we don't give them everything they need. There is some expense out of their own pockets for radios or ropes or backpacks, I mean. So we do have community groups. Rotary Club has been good. We had Finley for a lot of years that donated.
Speaker 3:But when we see donations coming in the sheriff's office it's typically search and rescue or our canine program. Those are the ones that everybody just wants to help out and there's always going to be a need there, right? Radios aren't going to last forever. Ropes need to be replaced, just technology changing with GPS units and things like that. So I think that would be a big part of it. Our canines, you know, chew toys only last so long. We do have a company in town that donates the food to our canines, which we really appreciate, but little things like that.
Speaker 3:So we've used some donations to build a canine training facility out at my office. That's awesome. You mentioned a gym. I have a nice gym at my office already, so we don't need that. But St George City could probably use some help there. Yeah, uh, but the back to the volunteer side. So, uh, search and rescue we have uh, two ground teams, an East side team and a West side team, but then we have technical rescue, things like high angle uh, swift water dive teams, and then we also have an EMS team. So those are the disciplines within search and rescue and we have very dedicated volunteers that donate, you know, hundreds of hours a year. During COVID we saw, you know.
Speaker 2:California and Nevada shut down.
Speaker 3:So we saw a huge influx in Washington County with tourism and we're getting a little breather right now.
Speaker 2:I think we are.
Speaker 3:So we that. So that 2021, we had 175 rescues. That doesn't count the rescues in Zion National Park. So we do. Zion National Park is in Washington County. Ultimately, it is my responsibility for search and rescue, but the park has our own search and rescue team which I rely on. I would say that if we had to do everything in Washington County, plus what the park would do, that double my rescues and I don't know if I'd be able to keep up with just volunteers I'd have to really look seriously adding some more full-time staff or shutting down trails and being like you can't.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sorry you're done, but we don't want to do that. I know we don't, but I mean even even talking about.
Speaker 2:I've heard you know there's funding cuts like national parks and things like that. I've heard that there there was some concern with this. Administration is like cutting funding to national parks is like part of this. You know waste, fraud and abuse and like there was some worry there and it's like at a certain point there's some dangerous some dangerous places that people probably just shouldn't be.
Speaker 3:I heard a little chatter from the park park ranger up there, the park ranger up there, so they have law enforcement rangers and then non-law enforcement rangers, but they haven't seen any direct impacts to Zion National Park. They've had some protesters up there, but they've been peaceful. At the park entrance, yeah, but we haven't seen any cuts there. I think a lot of it is reevaluating, like needs, right, how many park employees do we actually need? And let's find that number.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so so we're making sure we've got the right fit financially and to support the parks. So I don't think there's any talk about shutting down national parks. So you've heard a lot about the state of Utah wanting the federal government to turn over BLM and Forest Service land. National parks are never included in that discussion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're safe with the zion and yeah, and then getting all that that land, it's like then now we have to manage it. Now, now we actually, now we have to support those at those.
Speaker 3:Well, we, we do, man, I mean at the state level, that's what. So I think. So washington county is like 76 federal land. Yep, coincidentally, 74 of my search and rescues is on that federal land, oh, wow. So I'm, I'm here already, I'm handling that as the sheriff on BLM and forest service, they're not handling it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they just need to give us that land back. Just give it to us.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm. It would be nice if we they kicked in a little federal on their land.
Speaker 2:But that's for another day that is Another day that is All right, guys. Well, we're going to do a duel, we're going to find and settle this whole thing.
Speaker 1:You can't just concede, you're the chief man You've got to be like. No, I could totally be the sheriff.
Speaker 2:Maybe I could if I was lucky, if you were lucky, all right guys.
Speaker 3:Hey, thanks for coming.
Speaker 2:We'll keep you in mind. We'll come back and do another episode, maybe in a year or so, but I appreciate you guys spending the time to do it and reach out to the community. Keep up the good work. Keep safe, thanks. Thanks a lot. Hope you enjoyed this episode, guys. We'll see you out there. Thanks for listening in. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe. Make sure you're following us on all the social media websites. We love your support.