Salt Lake City is the largest city in Utah and has a population of around 200,000 residents. The city saw a 25% increase in violent crime in 2020 and an additional 5% increase in 2021. During 2021, the Salt Lake City Police Department maintained a 72% clearance rate for homicides, a 28% clearance rate for aggravated assaults with a firearm, and a 25% clearance rate for robberies. For reference, at the national level law enforcement agencies cleared 33% of all violent crime in 2021. To identify opportunities to increase its violent crime clearance rates during this violent crime spike, the SLCPD decided to participate in the NCCP to obtain a comprehensive assessment of its response to fatal and non-fatal shootings cases.
SLCPD has more than 450 sworn officers and 100 professional staff and is divided into four bureaus: Administrative, Investigative, Field Operations 1, and Field Operations 2. The responsibility of investigating violent crime falls to the Investigative Bureau, which is comprised of 101 personnel, including 16 professional staff members who are part of SLCPD's Victim Advocate program and a school resource officer subprogram.
SLCPD enjoys many strong relationships with state, local, and federal law enforcement and prosecutorial partners. Several members of the Robbery Squad, which handles shooting cases, robberies, aggravated assaults, have secondary assignments to various federal task forces that address cases involving denial of firearms under the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, bank robberies, child abductions, and firearms-related crime. SLCPD also participates in the Project Safe Neighborhoods initiative, which is a collaboration between SLCPD and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Utah. The agency also employs a Victim Advocate program and has advocates embedded within its Special Victims Unit, who help connect victims to various service providers to meet their specific and varied needs.
An RTI-led team comprising criminal investigators, forensic scientists, researchers, prosecutors, and victim services experts assessed SLCPD's policies and practices. The assessment included a review of SLCPD policies and training materials, a review and analysis of fatal and non-fatal shooting case files, and personnel interviews within SLCPD and among external partners.
The assessment team found that SLCPD personnel are dedicated, hardworking, and committed to serving the people of Salt Lake City and that members of the department are eager to embrace strategies for improving its response to violent crime. The assessment team identified current strengths of SLCPD including a strong victim advocacy program, good communication and working relationships between investigators in different units, and an innovative Community Liaison Officer position. It also identified areas for improvement, such as the need to implement regular case reviews between detectives and supervisors, standardize investigator training, and enhance the impact of their Crime Statistics and Analysis Unit. The NCCP team will work with SLCPD to determine which recommendations the agency can address and will support the agency in maintaining strengths and improving limitations to how they respond to fatal and non-fatal shootings.
*To learn more about Salt Lake City Police Department's Assessment, please contact caseclosed@rti.org.
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