This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Consider all that is circling the West Valley City Police Department:
• the Susan Cox Powell investigation;
• the Danielle Willard killing;
• the 19 dismissed cases, at minimum, from the neighborhood narcotics unit, which we were told today was disbanded months ago over "issues";
• the agency's "invitation" to the FBI to conduct an outside investigation that is apparently already under way;
• the vacancy in the office of the chief of police.
Given all that, it is an appropriate moment for West Valley's political leaders to abandon the search for a new chief and negotiate the city's way into the existing, stable and respected county Unified Police Department.
That move would provide West Valley's police officers with an expansion of professional opportunity, its citizens with more public safety resources, its taxpayers with probable cost savings, and its politicians distance from the serious issues in public safety that ought to be given over to professionals.
Howard R. Lemcke
Salt Lake City