Brian Redd tapped as Salt Lake's next police chief, but will he ease crime concerns?

SALT LAKE CITY — Mayor Erin Mendenhall presented her office's public safety plan to tackle crime in Salt Lake City in January. The plan specifically included increasing police presence downtown and in high-crime areas.

A month later, Mendenhall recommended a new police chief, Brian Redd, who's served as the Utah Department of Corrections executive director for nearly two years, to implement the plan.

Though crime is the lowest it has been in 16 years, Mendenhall said it doesn't matter what statistics say if people don't feel safe. "I've learned more than ever in this job that perception is reality and never more so than in public safety."

"The perception of being safe is real, and it is our job to address that," she told the Deseret News Editorial Board on Friday afternoon alongside Redd. "This change in leadership reflects that."

Mendenhall announced her nomination of Redd last week in a press conference. The Salt Lake City Council will make the deciding vote on Tuesday, and Mendenhall anticipates the council will lean in Redd's favor.

Strengthening relationships

Mendenhall said Friday that the city's government cannot work in isolation to execute her public safety plan.

Key actions of the public safety plan include:

• Increase police presence downtown and in high-crime neighborhoods to decrease gun violence and get drugs off the streets.
• Increase emergency shelter options to allow more year-round services for the homeless.
• Impose higher prosecution for "high utilizers" of the legal system.
• Expand treatment for mental health, behavioral health and substance use.
• Invest in housing to create options for homeless people following their time in shelter services.

It is "the most clear prescription for solutions across the spectrum of services for the people most in need and who are creating the most negative impact in the city," she said, adding that Redd "brings trusted relationships across this system and a proven record of positive transformation in departments that he has led."

Rep. Matthew Gwynn, R-Farr West, agreed, calling Mendenhall's nomination of Redd a "phenomenal pick."

"Brian is a change agent and will make surmountable strides in improving morale, thus creating an environment in which police officers will feel able and willing to proactively police Salt Lake City and respond to calls for service in a manner prescriptive to the individual calls themselves," he told the Deseret News, adding that he hopes Mendenhall will give Redd the "capacity and discretion to make decisions that will allow for the SLCPD to reach their full potential."

The SLCPD under Redd leadership

Redd told the Deseret News that the first thing he would do in his new role was listen to his officers' concerns.

"I said this all the time in the Department of Corrections, and it's true: How can we at the top make good decisions if we're not talking to the people on the ground and listening to them?" he asked.

"That's my commitment to the officers, (which) is to listen and to try to implement the things that they are seeing out on the street and providing that support," Redd said.

Promising to be a boots-on-the-ground kind of leader, Redd has spent much of his professional career in that capacity. "I did that in the Department of Corrections. I worked the graveyard shift alongside the officers and made it a point to engage with all levels of the organization, and I did the same in the Department of Public Safety," he said. "I will be with the officers out in the field."

Will SLCPD comply with federal immigration enforcement?

Both he and Mendenhall said the police department would not enforce federal immigration laws unless absolutely necessary.

"There needs to be trust in those communities with the police because a lot of times what happens is those who are undocumented are victimized, many times, by their own community," Redd said. "We need to make sure that they feel comfortable to report crime to the police."

"The balance that I would have to strike is, do we need to have police officers in the area in case there's a problem? But I don't want the perception that we're involved in federal immigration enforcement. That is not our role."

Mendenhall mentioned that since the city receives grants from the Department of Justice, it remains in compliance with federal requirements and respects their actions, but local law enforcement "was never designed to do immigration enforcement (and) doesn't have any capacity in the systems to even do those kinds of checks and doesn't want to on top of everything else that our local policing is handling."

"We receive federal dollars, and we make sure that we're in compliance. But what's happening right now is destabilizing and ambiguous."

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