SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown shared his reaction to Tuesday night’s cuts to his budget made by the Salt Lake City Council.
Chief Brown is often described as “a cop’s cop.”
He’s risen through the ranks, spending nearly three full decades with the Salt Lake department and was named chief about five years ago.
Brown says he and his command staff team are listening and know what the expectations are from the city council and the public.
He knows the proposed cuts don’t go far enough for many people who called for millions to be slashed from the budget.
Still, he believes his department is already on solid footing and has embraced doing more to connect with the community.
“I know and I have heard what the councils expectations are,” Chief Brown said. “And we’re very thankful for the money for body cameras, additional body cameras, for training and for our social workers.”
On the flip side of that he says there’s never been a tougher time to be in law enforcement.
Over the past few weeks five of his officers have either retired or resigned from the department, including two officers of color.
“It saddens us but again, it’s a difficult time,” he said.
Brown has also reached out to to three of the younger officers and had a long talk with them about why they were leaving.
“And these officers are kind of young in their careers, didn’t have a lot of time invested in the system and they said, ‘Chief, it’s hard, it’s very difficult with my family, I need the support of my family and they said I love the job, I love the career but for me, right now and my family and our needs, I’m going to move forward and maybe go back to school and look for another profession,” the chief said. “I can’t fault them for that.“
Chief Brown went on to say despite those departures not one call for service has gone unanswered and he didn’t know of a time when his officers have not shown up for work or been part of any kind of ‘blue flu.’
He’s very proud of that and has vowed to continue to work closely with the city council, the Mayors office and the public to do whatever is needed to ensure the SLCPD is the most transparent agency in the state.
