This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
At the April 18 Woods Cross City Council meeting, Police Chief Greg Butler presented the statistic: 18 to 20 percent of Woods Cross police calls are in West Bountiful and surrounding cities rather than in Woods Cross.
A week before this meeting I saw two UTA officers arrest a small, homeless black man sleeping on the grass in Woods Cross. Four Woods Cross officers sped through Woods Cross flashing their lights.
They searched the man's backpack and emptied his possessions on the ground. The man had a few clothes, a half-eaten bag of chips but no drugs or weapons.
The UTA officer said the man refused to give them his name. They took off his shoes, handcuffed him and drove away with him in a UTA police car. If six gun-toting, bulletproof vest-wearing officers are needed to arrest one little unarmed man, Woods Cross has enough officers.
The need for more officers was used as an argument for the last tax increase. Butler reported that West Bountiful and other cities do not back up Woods Cross officers 18 to 20 percent.
The residents of neighboring cities and, in particular, West Bountiful, have a median income of about $10,000 more than Woods Cross residents, according to the last U.S. census. West Bountiful taxpayers should be subsidizing Woods Cross police instead of the present situation.
Butler said that he wasn't going to change this situation unless the council directed him to do so. It is time for Woods Cross to move to a consolidated, unified police department, like Salt Lake City, and share the costs of police services fairly.
D.L. Weeks
Woods Cross