SALT LAKE CITY — Before they were identified by their own department as encouraging a rookie to cut into a homeless man’s body, two Salt Lake City police officers were sued in other cases involving people experiencing homelessness.
In a complaint filed last summer, former Officer Mark Keep is accused alongside three of his colleagues of using bodyweight to hold a handcuffed man down on his stomach until he stopped breathing and died.
A separate case alleges that Mullenax and his partner broke a homeless woman’s leg during a struggle to get her handcuffed. The leg later had to be amputated.
“We see this repeated pattern within the homeless community,” said Wendy Garvin, executive director of Unsheltered Utah, in an interview with FOX 13 News. “It’s just shocking to think that people who already have so few protections would then be targeted by people with so much power.”
The rookie officer who used a box cutter to slice through blisters on 47-year-old Jason Lloyd’s skin was taking his directions from Mullenax and Keep in what one document referred to as a “type of hazing.” The department found Mullenax violated four department policies that day, for which he received a three-day suspension. Keep violated eight department policies and resigned in lieu of discipline.
"When we see the same officers dishing it out over and over again, it tells me there’s a culture within the Salt Lake City PD that must be addressed and must be changed,” Garvin said of those officers’ involvement in the other incidents with people experiencing homelessness.
FOX 13 News reached out to the Salt Lake City Police Department to ask about the lawsuits in those cases, as well as the department’s approach to interacting with people experiencing homelessness.
Brent Weisberg, a spokesman with the department, said he could not speak to pending litigation. But he stressed that the agency is committed to “core values that include compassion, in every interaction, especially with people experiencing homelessness.”
“Every day, our officers and professional staff interact with hundreds of community members,” he continued in a written statement. “We work to meet their expectations every time. If we fall short, we take responsibility, learn, improve, and hold ourselves accountable. Public safety is built on trust and empathy. The SLCPD remains dedicated to treating everyone with dignity and respect while working toward greater public safety.”
‘They’re all dopers’
While she described the officers’ actions in Lloyd’s case as “horrifying,” Garvin said she was also disappointed in their words – particularly after watching a conversation officers had on the scene that day about how they would handle the experience of becoming homeless. “I don’t think any of us would live the same way that the people here live when they’re homeless,” one officer said in the exchange, which was captured on body camera. “We’d probably have a tent and a backpack and, like, be out of sight out of mind. You know what I mean? Keep our stuff consolidated.”
“There would be a reason you were homeless, though,” a second officer added. “Like, not like these guys where they’re all dopers, addicted to vices.”
“I mean, a lot of it when it comes down to it, they're just plain a--holes,” a third officer said. “Yeah, you can give them a diagnosis to explain it, and the diagnosis is correct. But in layman’s terms, they’re a--holes. That’s why they can’t stay housed.”
Those comments, Garvin believes, betray a sense of disdain for the homeless among these officers – as well as a failure to recognize the complex set of circumstances that often lead people to become homeless.
“I frequently see contempt in the way that Salt Lake City police officers address the homeless population or talk about the homeless population,” she said. “So it’s very clear to me that within the Salt Lake City Police Department there is a culture of contempt and disregard.”
That culture, she believes, seeped into the way officers responded not only in Lloyd’s case but also in other interactions with the unsheltered community.
"That dehumanization plays out in the way that the homeless population is arrested, the way that they’re interacted with, the way that they’re offered services,” Garvin said. “And then, of course, in this case how they were treated after death.”
‘Something that needs to be fixed’
James Roberts – a civil rights attorney who’s representing the family of Nykon Brandon in a lawsuit filed against Keep and other officers last year – said people experiencing homelessness are often treated unfairly in interactions with police from the second an interaction begins.
“If I get pulled over or an officer approaches me and I’m wearing a suit, I’m going to be talked to in a different manner than someone who is clearly homeless," he said in an interview.
Mental illness and substance abuse can further complicate these interactions, which he said necessitates strong de-escalation skills on the part of an officer.
“They run hand in hand – mental health training and de-escalation,” Roberts added. “And the lack of both, I think, is creating a large problem across the nation when officers are dealing with the homeless population.”
In Brandon’s case, it’s not clear whether Salt Lake City officers were aware he was homeless. But both substance use and mental health played into the interaction.
The lawsuit alleges that while 911 callers identified Brandon as someone who was experiencing a mental health crisis, officers were not well equipped to deal with someone in that state.
And while the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office declined to pursue criminal charges in Brandon’s death – saying the officers used reasonable force – the lawsuit also contends that Keep and the other officers who held Brandon down with their body weight were not properly trained on the dangers of the prone position.
The medical examiner ultimately found that the physical struggle with officers and prone restraint had contributed to Brandon’s death, as did obesity and methamphetamine use.
“They held down a man who was experiencing mental health issues after he no longer needed to be restrained,” argues Roberts. “They continued restraining him to his death. They had previously done the same thing to a woman, Megan Mohn, another member of the homeless population there in Salt Lake.”
Monh’s family is also suing the police department over her death. The city’s attorneys have disputed claims of improper training in court filings in both cases.
In a final case involving the Salt Lake City Police Department, Agnes Martinez alleges she was looking for a place where she and her dog could sleep in her car for the night without being harassed when Mullenax and another officer encountered her on patrol.
They said they smelled marijuana in the car and told her they needed to search it, body camera footage shows. Shortly afterward, police said they were going to put her in handcuffs.
When Martinez questioned that decision and resisted their efforts to put her hands behind her back, the officers took her to the ground using a method the lawsuit describes as “dangerous.”
That takedown broke Martinez’s leg, the lawsuit alleges. Doctors tried to save the limb but couldn’t and amputated it above the knee.
“That’s an awfully high price to pay for a small amount of weed in her car,” Garvin said. The Salt Lake City Police Department released body camera footage of the encounter last year and said it was conducting multiple investigations. Until those are completed, the department said it could not independently verify the medical cause of Martinez’s amputation and said “any assumptions, including any conclusions or correlations between the amputation and the officers’ encounter, would be premature and potentially misleading.”
For Roberts, the allegations raised in the cases of Brandon, Lloyd, Martinez and Mohn together show evidence that there need to be changes to the city’s approach to policing the homeless.
“It’s a problem that the police department needs to fix before someone else loses their life,” he argues. “And apparently it needs to be fixed on what happens when they run across someone who has already lost their life, not to mishandle the body.”