Salt Lake City unveiled a bold public safety plan — at the behest of the governor and legislative leaders — Thursday to address crime and homelessness in the capital city that Mayor Erin Mendenhall says will take complete buy-in across all levels of government to achieve.
The comprehensive initiative outlines 27 recommendations for the city to undertake, including the Salt Lake City Police Department launching a Community Impact Division to increase officer presence and reduce crime downtown and deploying the Violent Criminal Apprehension team to “aggressively” tackle gang activity and remove guns and drugs from the street.
It also looks to “expedite” the development of deeply affordable housing and the creation of temporary emergency shelter, including the use of city-owned property for a campus facility for up to 24 months, to fill the year-round shortage of 1,000 to 1,600 emergency shelter beds.
The plan particularly focuses on unsheltered people who don’t go to the city’s resource centers for whatever reason, including being banned because of their behavior or for breaking rules. Mendenhall said that population, often a confluence of mental illness and petty criminal activity as both perpetrators and victims, is the most expensive to help in a system not equipped to accommodate them. They have more complicated needs than a stay in jail or placement in housing alone can solve. Local governments, homeless services providers and law enforcement refer to them as “high needs, high impact” or “high utilizers.”
“I’m so fed up with the brokenness of this system. Our officers are so fed up taking people to jail for not being able to take them to services because they’re not available and having people just end up right back on the streets where we interfaced with them four hours earlier,” the mayor told the Deseret News and KSL editorial boards ahead of Thursday’s announcement of the public safety plan.
(EMBARGOED UNTIL 1/16/2025 at 11:30 AM) Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall discusses a public safety plan to address crime and homelessness while meeting with the Deseret News editorial board at the Deseret News’ office in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News
Even as the fastest-growing state in the country, Utah built a static shelter system amid a profound housing crisis that is incapable of responded to predictable growth of homelessness, Mendenhall said. The initiative aims to holistically address systemwide gaps that have prevented the city and the state from adequately addressing the complexity of the issue.
The plan notes that while homelessness is not a crime, the perception of safety, and at times actual safety, are heavily impacted by the prevalence of unsheltered individuals.
In addition to the city action items, the plan includes 23 recommendations for entities outside the city, including the Utah Legislature and Salt Lake County. The city intends to pay for the immediate actions with existing resources, with the potential for seeking money more in future budgets. The plan calls for legislative appropriations this year. The city also intends to use revenue from a fee Smith Entertainment Group will attach to ticket sales at Delta Center events as part of an agreement to revitalize the downtown Salt Lake area.
“Unequivocally, our taxpayers are spending more by not addressing this problem than they would if we did the right thing and solved this,” Mendenhall said.
State Republican leaders call for a plan
The plan came as the result of a strongly worded mid-December letter to Mendenhall from Gov. Spencer Cox, Utah Senate President Stuart Adams and Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz that called for the city to find solutions to “eliminate crime and restore public safety” or have the Legislature step in. “The ineffectiveness of the SLCPD has become glaringly apparent,” they wrote. The Republican leaders gave the city an ultimatum to deliver the plan to them by Jan. 17.
“If your plan demonstrates the decisive leadership and results needed to resolve these issues, we work to strengthen and sustain your efforts through legislative action,” the letter reads. “However, if progress stalls or alignment cannot be achieved, the legislature is prepared to move forward with legislation to increase state involvement and oversight during the upcoming legislative session.”
The Utah Legislature’s 2025 general session starts next Tuesday.
Schultz told the Deseret News earlier this week that public safety is a local government — not state government — responsibility.
“What we are seeing in Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County is they are neglecting their No. 1 priority,” he said. “And it’s frustrating to me that Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County are choosing to put their budgets in other areas rather than focus on what’s most important and the citizens of the state expect, and that’s public safety. If we continue on the track that we are on, we will become like Portland, like what’s happening in California.”
The speaker said the state wants to work with the city and county but it can’t take over homelessness in every area. “It’s not our job,” Schultz said.
Renee Shaw, director of Showers of Hope, sets up in Liberty Park with a camper containing two hot shower stalls, food, and clothing in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News
Though Mendenhall, a Democrat, called the legislative leaders’ letter a “directive,” she said she embraced the opportunity to create a plan.
“I felt gratitude for it. I wholeheartedly welcome this invitation. I don’t know if I would have felt that way a few years ago,” she said.
But she said that the various players must go all-in for the public safety plan to succeed.
“All of these partners have to agree that we have to fix the whole system. This is not an a la carte menu. If the Legislature and the partners choose to pick and choose some of these initiatives and changes and not others or partially fund or hold hostage some to see the success of others, it will fail and we will be right back here next year,” she said.
Asked what she wants from state lawmakers this session now that the plan is developed, the mayor said, “Action.” The Legislature, she said, can leverage its ability to make more jail beds available as well as mental health and substance use services.
Salt Lake City police account for 28% of all bookings at the Salt Lake County jail — more than double that of any other agency — and nearly half of people self-report as being homeless, according to the mayor’s office.
Schultz said legislative leaders are “frustrated” but encouraged by the mayor’s response. “We’re going to come together,” he said. “We want to help. We want to be a partner in it. It is not the state’s responsibility, and if it becomes the state’s responsibility, then that’s going to be a problem, because then it’s the state’s responsibility.”
Cox told reporters Thursday he appreciates Mendenhall and the plan the city put together.
“There’s a roll for the state to play. More will be coming,” he said, adding its the execution that matters. “This isn’t micromanaging, it’s seen as solving a very big problem.”
Operation Rio Grande
The last time the state stepped in to tackle crime and homelessness in Salt Lake City drew both praise and criticism.
A state-led initiative called Operation Rio Grande was launched in an effort to bring the city’s most troubled neighborhood under control in preparation for the closure of the downtown shelter on Rio Grande Street and the transition to a new homeless system, with the construction of three new homeless resource centers.
Two years later, the $67 million effort resulted in thousands of arrests for mostly misdemeanor crimes, 263 people being housed, 174 people entering drug treatment and 246 people employed.
American Civil Liberties Union reports called the operation a “flawed mode” and a “hammer” that treated people experiencing homelessness and drug addiction like “nails.” The ACLU contends the thousands of arrests did not lead to thousands receiving treatment, and left many worse off, with new marks on their criminal records. It also said the arrests overburdened the criminal justice system with low-level offenders.
What else is in the public safety plan?
In the city’s new public safety plan, city leaders identified several barriers to addressing homelessness and crime through interviews, data collection and research. Those include housing gaps, inadequate support services, poor coordination among agencies and balancing the needs of unsheltered people with safety and usability of public spaces.
Several guiding principles help form the plan, including that everyone should be treated with dignity and have access to services; public spaces will be safe, clean and inviting to law-abiding people; criminals will be held accountable and the city will hold itself accountable for what it controls and work collaboratively.
Other key elements of the plan include:
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More coordinated prosecution and more stringent penalties for “high utilizers.”
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Expanded mental health, behavioral health and substance use treatment programs.
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Increase the availability of deeply affordable housing and permanent supportive housing.
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Commitment from the city, county and state to the plan and its execution.