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SALT LAKE CITY — Dozens of Salt Lake City residents turned out to a town hall meeting Monday night to vent and discuss potential solutions to crime and safety issues along the State Street corridor.
Officials estimated more than 200 homeowners, renters and city and county leaders attended the meeting, which was organized by city councilwoman Erin Mendenhall.
“By coming together with a joint focus of positive change, we can make a change in this area,” Mendenhall told the crowd. “What is happening around the State Street area —– the ‘climate of crime’ that I call it — is unacceptable.”
Residents quickly pointed to problems in the area between 900 South and 2100 South from West Temple to 300 East, including violent crime, prostitution, drug abuse, theft, bad landlords and vagrancy.
“A week ago there were 15 to 16 shots fired three houses away from me,” single mother Melissa Camp said of her neighborhood. “Just this last Saturday, there was a stabbing. About three weeks ago, there was a drive-by — all in the same area.”
Camp said she wants to move, but can’t afford it.
“I want to see what the city wants to do about all of this and improve multiple neighborhoods,” Camp said.
Piper Down Pub owner Dave Morris said prostitution and drug dealing have served as deterrents to business outside of his establishment.
“It’s really scary. Do you want to go back there or do you want to go downtown where there is a modicum of safety?” he questioned.
Morris said those who get arrested are often back out on the street the next day doing the same things.
“It’s all done with this impunity like there are no repercussions for those actions,” Morris said.
Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown said his department has nearly doubled its patrol staffing in the past year and believes those changes will pay dividends over time.
“We’re putting our money where our mouth is,” Brown said. “We’re trying to beef up that front line — those people that respond when there’s a problem.”
Brown and other city leaders like Mendenhall and Mayor Jackie Biskupski said the issues extend beyond crime to matters such as poverty and addiction.
“Drugs are driving the majority of criminal activity. It’s driving the majority of violence and I’m confident that as we move forward, the state is as much at the table as the county is with the city on trying to address the drug addiction problems in this city and in this state,” Biskupski said.
Mendenhall said it was exciting to have representatives from various areas of the city and county attend the meeting, and described the evening as the “tip of the iceberg” in addressing the problems.
“I hope that the city and county staff and elected officials leave here tonight with our minds reeling with new ideas from policy to budgetary to administrative ideas — how we can start working differently tomorrow with the resources we have right now in order to effect change in this area,” Mendenhall. “We have to work on all of it, and we have to work on it all at the same time.”
