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SALT LAKE CITY— A police group is leveling fresh criticism at the Salt Lake County District Attorney's office over a man's death in a car crash in Kearns.
His case was one of the many investigated by West Valley's Narcotics Unit that has since been dropped by the district attorney.
The head of the Utah Fraternal Order of Police said in a published report that essentially this man would still be alive if his case hadn't been dismissed.
"Saying that some person may or may not have been alive as a result of that is absolutely ridiculous," said Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill.
James Randall Wilkes, a 43-year-old who had been charged with drug distribution, was killed instantly when the Montero he was driving went across Northbound traffic lanes crashed into a concrete pedestrian crosswalk Friday, police said. The female passenger riding with him was also injured.
Wilkes belonged to an Aryan prison gang and cops made at least two undercover drug buys from him during their investigation, according to a police report from the West Valley Police Department.
The F.O.P. is contending these are violent criminal gang members whose cases were dismissed, including the man who was killed on Friday. Utah Fraternal Order of Police President Brent Jex said not only that Wilkes may not have been in Kearns for Friday's crash if his case hadn't been dismissed, but that the big issue is that violent gang members are now free.
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The driver killed in a crash Friday that also injured a female passenger had ties to the West Valley City Police Department's embattled Neighborhood Narcotics Unit.He said these people are "dangerous to the public" and nothing in police reports "would justify a dismissal of the charges."'
There was enough impact on those cases that they no longer could maintain them, said Salt Lake County Chief Deputy District Attorney Blake Nakamura.
Prosecutors said it wasn't simply a matter of weighing the severity of the crimes; they first had to consider how tainted the case and the evidence were considering the West Valley Narcotics Unit's credibility in court.
Nakamura said the question was whether they would be able to use the evidence in the prosecution after all the issues were vetted with the court.
"Nobody finds any pleasure in having to dismiss cases," Gill said. "If the officers had just done their job and followed the rule of law, we wouldn't find ourselves in this scenario."
Dozens of drug cases in West Valley have been dismissed, and Gill has previously said he intends to re-prosecute in a lot of those. Prosecutors said they are still going over some of the complicated issues in doing that.
