Law enforcement would need over $2.7 million this year to police and clean up new Fairpark District

North Temple cuts through the Fairpark neighborhood of Salt Lake City on Wednesday, April 3, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

The resources available to ensure public safety in the area of Salt Lake City chosen to become home to a possible new baseball stadium are insufficient, according projections by Utah’s public safety commissioner.

“It just is to the point that I’ve got to have full-time resources given the amount of what we’re seeing, what we’re dealing with. And also just putting the dedicated effort into it,” Commissioner Jess Anderson told board members of the Fairpark Area Investment and Restoration District at their first meeting this month.

The Utah Legislature identified crime and public safety as key issues in creating the district on the west side and allocated $1 million for law enforcement and cleanup. But, the Department of Public Safety has already spent over half a million on efforts in the area so far.

Since November, the Utah Department of Public Safety has been working on the area that has dealt with drug and sex trafficking, in addition to being the site of homeless encampments, Anderson said.

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“Our projection is $2.7 million to get us through this year, of everything that we are putting toward this effort,” Anderson said.

The state assigned 11 full-time troopers to the area in June. Half of them are part of a narcotic squad, and the rest are a uniformed presence, Anderson said. The $2.7 million would pay for the public safety efforts that have already been put in place. Cleanup contracts with a third party would come in addition to the department’s estimate.

Because the Utah Department of Transportation has its hands full with road maintenance, construction and plowing snow in the winter, it isn’t able to continue a partnership to clean up camps along the state’s right-of-way and along the Jordan River Trail, Anderson said. So, the state is going under contract with a vendor for that endeavor.

Safety concerns

In focusing on the Fairpark neighborhood, the Public Safety Department has identified problems including weapon offenses, illegal camping, panhandling, vandalism, theft, and drug use along Salt Lake City’s portion of the Jordan River Trail, particularly, behind the Utah State Fairpark, down the Archie and Lois Archuleta Bridge, and Interstate 80.

This year alone, the department has removed more than 350,000 fentanyl pills coming into the area.

“We just took down 4,000 fentanyl pills on a dealer who just admitted to us that he will go down there for an hour and he will distribute that many pills in an hour,” Anderson said.

Since last November, the state department in partnership with the Salt Lake City Police Department has been addressing safety concerns on the Jordan River Trail, Anderson said, only using resources as needed. That changed in June, when the state decided to dedicate full-time employees to the area.

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Dan Strong, president of the Westside Coalition, who sits on the authority board, said he used to argue with those who said the west side of Salt Lake City was crime-ridden. After all, the neighborhoods were beautiful and the trail is an asset to the community.

“​I would jog, very slowly, almost every day on the trail and I always felt safe,” Strong said. “It really changed over the last year and right in this area. And I think there’s external factors.”

The topic has been the center of many community conversations, Strong said, and there have been substantial improvements since the public safety efforts started. But another concern lingers.

“It’s really important to the west side that we not just see this one area cleaned up and it pushed further down the trail into Rose Park, or Glendale,” Strong said, suggesting a collaboration with other law enforcement agencies to avoid that result.

A big attraction for illegal activity is the proximity to the river, Sandall said, and the next location may not be a place like Rose Park.

“​​The problems just aren’t gonna go away if we move it out of here. I understand that. But the next place will be where it’s geographically the most viable for them,” Sandall said.

Identifying those areas quickly is part of a proactive policing effort, along with community coordination, Anderson said.

In a three-year enforcement effort from 2017 to 2020, “the drug trade actually dispersed. They went to other areas predominantly out of the state,” Anderson said. However, North Temple is still a hotspot for drug trafficking. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has forecast that this year will break records for fentanyl seizures in Utah.

And, with the unsanctioned encampments, the Department of Public Safety hopes to provide proper spaces for shelter, and continue to have conversations with Utahns experiencing homelessness who are reluctant to go to a shelter provider.

City insight and coordination may also be vital for the success and safety of the Jordan River Trail, Salt Lake City Council member Victoria Petro said. She worried that this public safety plan might yield similar results as the Operation Rio Grande , a massive cleanup and rehabilitation plan for the Rio Grande neighborhood, that simply dispersed unsheltered people to other areas , such as North Temple, part of the Fairpark District.

“Clearly there is work to be done here. But what we don’t want to do is create an isolated response that’s just an amplified, ongoing operation Rio Grande that further destabilizes an area of Utah where they deserve to live with the dignity and respect that all Utahns live with,” Petro said.

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