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The scenario is familiar to gang cops in Salt Lake City: An officer sees a teen hanging out with older known gang members in a neighborhood, flashing gang signs or wearing gang colors to declare an allegiance.
The officer questions the teen, ready to document his or her identity in a database designed to help law enforcement track who is connected to a specific gang. But before the officer can file a card about the suspect's identity — complete with a photograph — he or she must find out the person's age.
When a child is 14 or under, an officer can't photograph or fingerprint the child without a court order, according to Utah law.
Police say those restrictions are making it problematic to document juvenile gang members at a time when gangs are recruiting increasingly younger protégés. Now the Governor's Gang Task Force is researching potential changes to the law, in part after the Salt Lake City police suggested the group take up the issue.
"A lot of times, kids give false information when you're just talking to them," said Salt Lake City police Deputy Chief Terry Fritz. "A change in law that would allow officers to photograph juveniles would help police on the street more quickly identify who they are interacting with."
Police could more easily direct children to gang-intervention programs if officers can identify them with photos, Fritz said.
But efforts to change the law could meet swift opposition from those who fear documenting juveniles could lead to falsely labeling them as gang members — a designation that could haunt them later in life, when they may have left bad associates behind.
Utah's current law took effect in 1996, around the same time a host of other juvenile legislation passed. Included was the Serious Youth Offender Act, which allows kids to be tried as adults for certain offenses.
Part of the law's rationale was that police shouldn't be taking fingerprints or other DNA evidence if a juvenile is not certified as an adult, according to initial research done by the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice.
Fritz said he is aware that any proposed changes to the law may bring criticism, particularly from defense attorneys and others who believe gang databases maintained by law enforcement violate civil and constitutional rights.
"A lot of parents would be fearful that if you ID my kid as a gang member when he's 14, what ramifications would it have for my kid when he's 18 and clean?" Fritz said.
But gang detectives see elementary-age children participating in gangs, Fritz said. Their youth is appealing to more seasoned gang members, who see them as a means to commit crime, knowing their young age will land them in the juvenile court system with what they view as an "easier sentence," he said.
"You see adults turning to juveniles to commit crime because it's a slap on the wrist," Fritz said.
He said gang detectives aren't interested in collecting DNA or fingerprints, but want to focus on changing the photo provision of the law. He said kids would need to meet criteria defining them as a gang member before they would be photographed and placed in the gang database. That criteria would match state and federal guidelines that law enforcement agencies need to meet to label people as known gang members.
If a child maintains a clear record for a year or two, he or she would be taken out of the database, Fritz said.
What's next
P The Governor's Gang Task Force will discuss the possibility of legislation that would allow police to photograph juvenile gang members without a court order at its next meeting in January.