New task force created to round up walkaways from prison halfway houses


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TAYLORSVILLE — As law enforcement officers continued Wednesday to look for a man who allegedly rammed a police patrol car while attempting to avoid arrest, questions were again being raised about a halfway house he walked away from.

Tommy Burnham, 29, walked away from the Fortitude Treatment Center on Jan. 28, according to the Utah Department of Corrections. It's the same facility that Cory Lee Henderson, 31, walked away from just weeks before he shot and killed Unified officer Doug Barney last month. It's also the same facility that Robert Richard Berger, 48, walked away from in September before he broke into two Salt Lake homes and nearly stabbed a woman to death in one of them.

A police officer shot and killed Berger during that attack, saving the woman's life. Henderson was also shot to death by police after he killed Barney and shot another officer three times.

Following the incident on Tuesday night that put his officers at risk again, Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder sternly said Wednesday that action will be taken.

"This has got to stop. We can no longer have individuals walking away from that center and not treated as a public safety risk that it is," he said. "We will go hunt them down. I'm done with having these people walk around our community and placing our officers at risk and the public."

The incident involving Burnham happened Tuesday as Murray and Unified police officers were looking for a black Jetta that had been stolen out of West Valley City the night before and was being driven by a man who they say was stealing license plates off other vehicles.

About 7 p.m., police spotted the vehicle near 6100 South just off State Street. The officers attempted to box the car in by placing one patrol car in front of the Jetta and one behind it. The officers then got out of their vehicles with their guns drawn, ordering the driver to get out, said Unified Police Lt. Lex Bell.

"The driver in the Jetta throws his car in reverse and rams the police car behind him and then moves the car backward almost a foot, which gives him enough room to squeeze out," Bell said.

The officer who was standing next to his open door was able to maintain his balance and not be knocked to the ground by his own vehicle, the lieutenant said. The officer also refrained from firing his weapon.

That incident led to a chase through Taylorsville, Murray and West Jordan. After creating distance between himself and the officers by running a red light, Bell said the fleeing driver abandoned the Jetta in a gated community near 1580 W. 7000 South before hopping over several fences and fleeing. Police K-9s were able to track him to a certain point before the trail went cold, possibly because someone picked up the man in another vehicle.

Items left behind in the Jetta helped detectives positively identify Burnham as the car thief, according to Bell.

Burnham left the Fortitude Treatment Center, 1747 S. 900 West in Salt Lake City, on Jan. 28, allegedly for a medical issue, according to the Department of Corrections. When he failed to show up at his intended destination and also failed to return to the center, a warrant was issued the next day for his arrest.

Since leaving Fortitude, Bell said investigators have linked him to at least four stolen vehicles.

"One of those was stolen with a gun in it, and the gun is now missing," he said.

Because of that, police currently consider Burnham "armed and dangerous," he said, and someone who has "violent tendencies."

Burnham appears to have posted comments on his Facebook page, even while he's been on the run from police.

On Jan. 12, he posted, "I have to check into a halfway house 2morrow." In another post, a man who identifies himself as Burnham's father gives him encouragement, saying, "You can do it son. I know you're strong and it looks like you got a lot of people that (have) your back."

Burnham also posted a link to Henderson's obituary on his Facebook page. He also posted links to several songs, mainly by rap artists with lyrics talking about their hard lives growing up and on the street.

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On Feb. 4, after Burnham had absconded from Fortitude, he appears to have again posted on Facebook, linking to one of those songs while writing: "Everyone who is tripping on me lately lisson (sic) to this song and know I know the price I have to swallow."

Ogden police confirmed Wednesday that another parole fugitive accused of recently absconding from the Fortitude Treatment Center was arrested for investigation of fleeing officers in his car and getting into a crash.

Todd Nelson, 44, allegedly ran from the scene after getting into a three-car wreck near 24th Street and I-15 a short time after 7 p.m. Wednesday. The woman he was with, 28-year-old McKael Smout, hid from police following the crash, Ogden Police Lt. Tim Scott said. Nelson and Smout were arrested and later taken to a hospital for injuries. The woman had a warrant out for her arrest, according to Scott.

Nelson drove away after police initially conducted a traffic stop, the lieutenant said. Officers followed him, though it wasn't immediately clear Wednesday whether they were actively pursuing him when he crashed.

Occupants in two other vehicles in the crash with Nelson suffered injuries that were not life-threatening. A passenger car in the wreck rolled over, causing the driver to be transported to the hospital with "minor" injuries, according to Scott.

Winder said Wednesday he has spoken with Salt Lake City interim Police Chief Mike Brown and Department of Corrections Executive Director Rollin Cook about forming a Fugitive Response Team to immediately go after offenders who abscond from Fortitude.

"It's the 'You walk away from Fortitude we'll come find you' unit," the sheriff said. "When an individual walks away, someone has got to go get them."

Winder said it does no good to point fingers and try to find blame for why offenders are walking away from the halfway house and are committing more crimes. He only wants to work on solutions.

"The problem is people are walking away from Fortitude and no one is going after them in a timely fashion. We've got to respond," he said. "I cannot have my officers again, say to me, 'I ran into another Fortitude guy.'"

Cook said his office has been addressing the problem. Over the weekend, more than 100 officers from multiple agencies were sent into Fortitude for a surprise inspection of the approximately 135 men housed there.

"We did a complete shakedown of that facility," he said.

Nine men were sent back to the Utah State Prison for either testing positive for drug use or for being noncompliant with the search. The task force then went out to track down offenders who had absconded and rounded up 12 more who were sent back to either prison or jail, Cook said.

Over the past year, he said the treatment center has had an average of five people walk away every week. It has only been recently that the issue has been in the public eye because of the actions of Henderson, Berger and Burnham.

"I don't think that it's a coincidence (all three came from Fortitude). So we're trying to track down what is (causing the problem)," Cook said.

Completely locking down the facility, however, is not a solution, he said. Fortitude is also filled with offenders who are legitimately trying to put their lives back in order. Many of them no longer have homes or have families that have given up on them, and they need the ability to go to work and make contacts in the community to get back on their feet.

"As long as they're doing the things that they're supposed to — if they're looking for work, if they're participating in treatment — we have an obligation to let them out and continue that," Cook said. "If you just lock that facility down, those people lose their jobs, they lose their connections in the community, some of the treatment they can't get to. So it's this difficult balance we maintain of who we can lock down and who we have to allow out because they're doing what they're supposed to.

"We have to afford them those opportunities to get out and improve and be a productive member of the community and it's a very difficult balance," he said.

Cook said his department is re-evaluating who should be released from prison to the Fortitude Treatment Center and under what conditions. Until then, Cook said the Department of Corrections has placed a hold on all five of its halfway houses for taking new offenders.

While Cook admits that a task force is being put together, he is concerned that publicizing it may raise other problems.

"That puts those officers in immediate risk that go out there and try to hunt these folks down," he said. "It puts them on notice that we're coming to get you. And when we do that, it puts those officers at risk just by placing it on the news."

But if that's what it takes, Cook said his officers are willing to do it to get dangerous offenders off the street, and hopefully deter future residents at Fortitude from walking away.

Contributing: Peter Samore, Nicole Vowell, Sandra Yi, Ben Lockhart

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