Proposal makes parolees easier to identify


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SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Department of Corrections and local police are working to make parolees more easily identifiable to boots-on-the-ground officers, potentially even by merging state driver’s license and offender-tracking databases, KSL has learned.

Corrections spokesman Steve Gehrke said the plan is in direct response to the Jan. 30 killing of Utah County Sheriff’s Sgt. Cory Wride.

Investigators said Wride was responding to a vehicle with its emergency flashers on and he encountered Jose Angel Garcia-Juaregui.

Garcia-Juaregui had done 4 1/2 years in prison, and was out on parole at the time. A warrant had, however, been issued for his arrest.

Detectives said they believe Garcia-Juaregui shot and killed Wride less than 20 minutes into the stop.

“Sometimes, unfortunately, it takes a tragic event or something devastating like this to happen to really step back and focus on specific areas like this,” Gehrke said.

Presently, an officer is able to pull up a driver’s basic information, but determining whether the individual is a parolee takes more digging and likely only happens if the officer detects something suspicious.

The proposed change would in theory flag a parolee on the first search.

“The information is there as-is,” Gehrke said. “The question is can we make it more readily available, more obvious.”

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The proposed change is being endorsed by the Utah Fraternal Order of Police.

“The fact is parolees constitute a very small percentage of the population, but commit a very large percentage of the felonies investigated by police,” the group said in a statement supplied to KSL. “Parole status is not highly protected information, but under the current system it is not readily available quickly.”

The statement also noted many other states currently provide parole and probation status information to police officers.

West Jordan Police Chief Doug Diamond was intrigued by the idea, acknowledging some of the inherent challengers officers face under the current system during things like traffic stops.

“The less the officer has to do to draw his attention away from the suspect vehicle, the better off we’re going to be,” Diamond said.

The idea also resonates with officers like Brett Madsen, who regularly does traffic enforcement in West Jordan.

"You never know if that car you're going to stop is just a basic, normal, everyday offender, or if it's somebody that's out dealing dope, or somebody that just killed their family," he said.

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