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Utah Group Aiming To Defund SLC Police List Demands

Decarcerate Utah, a group looking to defund the Salt Lake City Police Department, listed their demands Tuesday, saying local leaders have ignored the “will of the people,” according to KUTV.In a new declaration, the group claims the police department is overstaffed compared to similar-sized cities across the nation. They suggest the number of employees in the SLCPD be cut in half (from 711 to 356), which would free up a lot of money that could be spent elsewhere.

 

The group’s demands also include a reduction in the police department’s budget from $79 million to $39.5 million, the elimination of funding from the non-departmental budget reserved for policing operations and investment of the saved funds from the police department into supportive community programs. 

 

Decarcerate Utah is encouraging people in the community to share their thoughts at Tuesday night’s city council meeting, which will be streamed on the city’s Facebook and Youtube pages tonight at 7:00 p.m.

Tyler Hewitt is the web/social media assistant at UPR. He writes stories every day, updates the website and manages the station's Twitter and Facebook pages. Tyler is a senior at Utah State University and is studying public relations, marketing, and psychology. He loves to write, listen to music, play video games, play tennis and hang out with his fiancé and cat, Juno. He is a great plant dad and recently started collecting vinyl records!