There are troubling allegations that a former U police office involved in the Lauren McClusky case downloaded to his personal phone sexually explicit photos provided by McClusky in connection with her report to UofU police that she was being blackmailed. At least 1 photo was later shown to another officer. If I were Watkins I would immediately begin efforts to disband the police and contract the services through either SLC or the County. I don’t see any benefit to retaining its own entity.
I could not agree more! The University should be funding and developing education, not law enforcement. Stick with your core strengths, and let external experts deal with services for which you are not equipped.
This whole Lauren McCluskey situation is a tragedy, that should never have occurred, and in my opinion would never have occurred had she been dealing with competent detectives at the Salt Lake Police department. It is also now a HUGE black eye for the University, and who knows how much worst it will get before it’s over. Did anyone see this last embarrassing revelation coming?
I’d be interested to know what motivations the University ever had for having it’s own police force, and whether those motivations outweigh the enormous costs that will result from this situation.
Anyone have any insight?
I have a couple of relatives who work for the Salt Lake Police Department; I’ll ask if they have any historical knowledge and share it here (if I ever get to spend time with them).
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A mess to be sure. One thing about these latest revelations, which are horrible, is that it seems it all occurred while Dale Brophy was the Chief. No question the department was screwed up under him, but they have made the changes in leadership since. I think the acknowledgment of corrective actions tried to this point is ignored.
The argument for the U Police will be the size of the U, essentially a city with a population of Taylorsville concentrated in a small area. Is that good enough? I don’t know. I would hope things are compared with the norm around the country when making that assessment.
Ok, so there have been corrective actions; at least in the form of changing the chief, and hopefully the culture. But what of preventative actions to keep things like the photos, let alone Lauren McClusky’s death from happening again? Have we heard anything beyond the change of chief? Not being in state anymore means I don’t get details except thru here (normally).
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There were something like 68 corrective actions identified by the panel that reviewed the case and all have been implemented. That included a lot of procedure stuff, organization, training, emergency call boxes on campus, etc.
Ok, thank you for the heads up. It’s good to know that they’re at least making changes that should help prevent many problems.
Even with changes, I think the U should contract with SLC or Salt Lake County. If crimes occur on campus they rely on the prosecutors and courts in SLC. It just makes more sense.
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I think one of our problems is that many people would consider that to be victim shaming. Drives me nuts.
This is another reason that all message boards (like ours) should work like snapchat. All posts should auto-delete after a month. No one is putting a lot of thought into these posts, and we’ll all be wrong in embarrassing ways on occasion. Better to just let these old posts disappear.
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I don’t know why I’m the only person who seemingly wants this feature in a message board. It should be a built-in standard option.
I can search and find postings I made 30-40 years ago on ‘usenet’ and often think how foolish and naive some of them were. For all I know, someone will read THIS statement in another 30-40 years.
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They are demanding that, just in much nicer terms
Not a subject I want to think about at all, but following up on this topic with the results of the investigation as published in the SLTRIB today.
I don’t actually know what to say… at all 
Edit - after a few moments of thought:
- Unconscionable treatment of McCluskey
- WAAAAYYYY beyond Embarrassment for my University
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That individual (they are not deserving of being referred to as an officer) should be barred from ever serving in ANY position in law enforcement. This is a horrible misuse of their position. The public needs to be served and protected, not have their privacy violated in such a manner.
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Didn’t that officer get a job with Logan?
Corrective actions? Don’t people have common sense and decency? Personal responsibility? WTF was the ex-chief doing? What were the hiring standards? Oh, right, like many things in our country (e.g., doing basic math, speaking adequate english, getting drivers license), our standards are low.
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Yup, Miguel Deras, is still with Logan police department.
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Trib just announced that Deras has been fired from the Logan police. He should never be allowed into a position in law enforcement again.
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The police do not police themselves. They never have, they are a brotherhood who’s No 1 job is to protect each other.
I think when people say they want to restructure PDs and even defund the police, it seems like what they want is a police force that doesn’t protect their own criminal behavior.
I read where a Los Angeles County sheriff is suing the department claiming there are about four gangs who are all officers in the department. At least one of the gangs associate with white supremacy.
If this officer showed her photos to other officers there should be criminal charges and if the other officers didn’t report it, they should be fired. This is why people are dumping on the police, they get away with so many abuses.
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I have previously posted here that I am completely in favor of shutting down the campus police department and replacing their efforts with existing local agencies.
I have also posted previously my complete contempt for the officer that displayed the photos in question, and have nothing but contempt for any officers who witnessed it and did nothing. I don’t know if there are actually charges that can be filed against any and all, but I believe there are and I assume they will be filed.
However, to lump every police officer into this same category is unreasonable. There are cops everywhere, who daily do whatever it takes to stand by their convictions. There are also those that have no convictions, as well as those that lack the courage to stand by their convictions. In that regard, Cops are no different than any other group of people in any other walk of life.
I assure you that there are plenty of Cops in this valley who feel and say the same things that we all are saying relative to the officers in this case. I know some of them and have heard the comments.
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People don’t realize in most departments more cases opened by internal affairs come from internal complaints than anywhere else.
Most police officers don’t like attention. They would much rather do their job and go home with no one knowing the good things they did. And to that end we rarely hear the good, partially because officers don’t want attention and partially because good doesn’t sell advertising.
If you ever meet a GRAMA coordinator, ask them how many reporters have requested disciplinary records for their department. Then ask how many have requested commendations. The latter is likely to be 1 or 2 at best.
There are bad officers here and there. But they are the exception. Just like every other profession.
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