- Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder

The trend began with Draper. Then Taylorsville did it and, most recently, Cottonwood Heights. Now Holladay could follow.

But not everyone is giving the Sheriff's Office the boot. In fact, some cities are so content with Salt Lake County's law enforcement that they are expanding their coverage.

Leaders in Riverton, Bluffdale and Herriman - three of the sheriff's four remaining city clients - say they are pleased with the service and the control they get through precinct commanders.

"I just couldn't be happier," Riverton Mayor Bill Applegarth said. "We have a lot of local control and input. We could not have better functioning police protection than we have now."

And Sheriff Jim Winder praises these civic leaders for seeing past the politics that he insists dominated the discussion leading up to Cottonwood Heights' recent decision to defect and form its own police department.

"The bottom line: This is politics versus public safety," Winder said. "These cities in the southwest are worried about the safety of their citizens, and they act on that."

Starting with Riverton, the three southwest suburbs appear to be carving a trend of their own: paying the sheriff more cash for more coverage.

Riverton just upped its sworn-deputy count by 12 (to 28 deputies and two school officers) and is about to tack on four of its own sergeants after years of sharing those supervisory services with neighboring Herriman and Bluffdale.

Riverton chose to increase its sheriff's coverage and open its own precinct rather than start its own police department. The city of 36,000 began studying the two options after finding Bluffdale frequently relied on deputies in Riverton and Herriman to respond to calls.

Riverton's new annual bill for cop coverage: $3.4 million. That's a $1 million jump from its former 16-deputy shared service. In contrast, self-providing would have given Riverton 32 officers but would have cost nearly $2 million in start-up costs alone.

Cottonwood Heights would have paid $3.8 million for 29 deputies but voted to launch its own police force. That move will provide 32 officers at an annual tab of $4.2 million - along with $1.7 million in upfront costs.

Sheriff's Lt. Rod Norton, the head of Riverton's new precinct, maintains the county gives the best service.

"I told the mayor that if he came to me tomorrow saying Riverton is forming its own police department and he wants me to be chief, which would be financially better for me, I'd turn him down," Norton said. "It's because I live here. The Sheriff's Office is the best service and biggest bang for the buck for my family and for my kids in the future."

Sure, Riverton still sends deputies across city lines into Bluffdale and surrounding areas. But it's more selective now - they respond solely to emergency calls.

Riverton's tinier southern and western neighbors might boost their deputy services, too, though not likely to the same scale.

Bluffdale, having settled internal strife over its form of government, might add a deputy this year to serve the suburb of 7,000 people.

Herriman Mayor Lynn Crane sees no immediate plan to expand deputy coverage, but he said his city "would continue to add officers as population demands and resources allow."

The surging city of 15,000 just annexed 4,000 acres from Bluffdale. That land remains undeveloped. But, after years of battles with Bluffdale's City Hall, developers are poised to build.

Crane noted having a precinct in Herriman gives him more input and said if other cities could have shared pooled services like the southwest suburbs, they might not have turned to self-providing.

But Winder acknowledged that, as cities become more independent, they often move away from his services - creating a justice court as a revenue producer and a police department to feed it. That, he said, partly explains why cities often hand out more citations after making the switch.

"To say this isn't about revenues - it absolutely is," Winder said. "The question that has to be raised is: What are cops out there for? If they have to write X number of tickets, they aren't focusing on crimes impacting the valley like fraud, identity theft, robbery, etc."

State lawmakers are targeting so-called ticket quotas to rein in revenue-hungry local governments.

sgehrke@sltrib.com