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00;00;04;07 - 00;00;07;01
Speaker 1
This is one Ogden, and I'm Kiki Bushman.
00;00;07;03 - 00;00;15;19
Speaker 2
And I'm Jefferson Shepard. We're going to start with a few stories about policing, because there are a couple debates happening right now that are really about the same question.
00;00;15;21 - 00;00;20;19
Speaker 1
What do we want local law enforcement doing, and how much do we know about what they're doing?
00;00;20;20 - 00;00;32;22
Speaker 2
And the first one is ice. The argument over ice. And Ogden police came back again at this week's city council meeting, with residents pushing the city for a clear policy on what Ogden officers do when Ice is making an arrest.
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Speaker 1
If an Ice agent is here taking somebody into custody, what is the Ogden officer supposed to do?
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Speaker 2
And Mayor Ben says the city was already looking at putting something in.
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Speaker 3
Writing is something that we have been talking about for a while and have actually put work into already before this event took place. So we'll be we'll be quick to listen, slow to speak. Your your father get angry. This evening. Thank you. Can ask him.
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Speaker 4
You can ask him after. Sorry. Sorry, mayor.
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Speaker 2
So now I'm interested in what that policy actually says when we see it.
00;01;07;26 - 00;01;11;01
Speaker 1
Because right now people are filling in the blanks themselves.
00;01;11;07 - 00;01;19;21
Speaker 2
Some people see an officer standing there and think he's helping ice. Somebody else sees the same video and think he's just keeping the situation under control.
00;01;19;24 - 00;01;34;05
Speaker 1
A written policy at least gives everybody the same set of rules to argue about. And there's another piece to the ice story. Weber County deputies are actually doing some immigration work themselves, and the county can bill Ice for some of that time.
00;01;34;08 - 00;01;43;10
Speaker 2
QR says deputies logged 236 hours from January through July, and the bill was about $14,800.
00;01;43;12 - 00;01;46;16
Speaker 1
Which honestly isn't a ton of money for a county.
00;01;46;17 - 00;02;00;03
Speaker 2
But it does put a number on how involved we are. And Kuer found something else that I thought was interesting. 35 of the 91 people arrested through Ogden's 287 G program had no criminal history.
00;02;00;05 - 00;02;06;15
Speaker 1
Now, that doesn't tell us the circumstances of those individual arrests or whether they were justified.
00;02;06;17 - 00;02;14;05
Speaker 2
But if your impression was that this program is only being used to go after people with serious criminal records, that's not really what the numbers show.
00;02;14;07 - 00;02;19;25
Speaker 1
For more on immigration, let's go to Macy Lipkin from QE.
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Speaker 5
So I want to catch back up on some of the immigration stuff we talked about. Let's start with the Ice facilities because now they're not opening. Is that right?
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Speaker 6
Yeah. So we kind of knew this was coming since June when The New York Times reported that I was calling off warehouses in a bunch of different cities around the country, and they included the reporter included. Salt Lake City is one of those. So I had a story on that. We all kind of scrambled, and we're basically repeating what The New York Times had said.
00;02;46;02 - 00;03;03;09
Speaker 6
And then we knew, like the most likely way to confirm this will be in the court documents. You know, DHS had 60 days to respond to the lawsuit because Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County had sued Ice over the warehouse. DHS actually asked for a two week extension and then got it and then put it in the court documents that they were not going to do it.
00;03;03;09 - 00;03;10;11
Speaker 6
They were not going to make the warehouse into a detention center, and the building will just be handed over to the General Services Administration.
00;03;10;14 - 00;03;15;25
Speaker 5
So is there any evidence that, like the protests and citizen action had an impact?
00;03;16;00 - 00;03;35;07
Speaker 6
I was actually just talking with Representative Angela Romero. She said she really appreciates the people who showed up and protested. She sees it as having played a role. I don't know that we can say definitively, especially when we had a new person take charge of DHS Mark, when Mullin took over for Kristi Noem, and then this was all dismantled.
00;03;35;07 - 00;03;42;19
Speaker 6
So I don't think I can say for sure whether the protest really had a big say or if it was just going to come through the change in ministration anyway.
00;03;42;26 - 00;03;48;09
Speaker 5
Is there any evidence that this was some kind of real estate deal and a transfer of money?
00;03;48;11 - 00;04;08;01
Speaker 6
Not that I know of. That said, whoever owns that building made out like an absolute bandit because the building and property were valued at like 97 million and they sold it for 145 million. And, you know, there's no take back. So they just made a 50% profit on that. That's enormous.
00;04;08;03 - 00;04;12;27
Speaker 5
You know, we talked about the immigration courts and the backlogs and stuff. I'm curious what has changed over there.
00;04;12;29 - 00;04;37;08
Speaker 6
Yeah. So as of actually just a few days ago, there is yet another new judge at the Salt Lake City immigration court. Things are definitely speeding up. This past July, the Salt Lake City immigration Court closed more cases in a single month than it ever has since it opened in 2005. Part of that is because what they're calling they being like lawyers and advocates are calling Mega masters.
00;04;37;14 - 00;05;00;21
Speaker 6
So the master Calendar hearing is just like a preliminary court hearing and immigration court, you know, like do all your stuff, fill out your forms and come back in another date. These dockets have just been ballooning in size. So I just saw in July where I was sitting there in the courtroom and heard a judge say that he had was it like 59 cases just that afternoon?
00;05;00;25 - 00;05;17;03
Speaker 6
What happens if you don't show up to one of these hearings? The judge can just deport you, like, can issue a deportation order because you didn't show up. And lawyers say that a lot of the time these dates are getting moved up sooner and people aren't being properly notified, so then they just end up getting a deportation order.
00;05;17;03 - 00;05;32;05
Speaker 6
So when I say it's closed the most cases in a month than ever before. A lot of that is likely because people aren't showing up to their court dates and they're just getting any quotation order, and that closes the case. But like whether people are notified that they're supposed to be there, you know, the immigration court will tell you.
00;05;32;06 - 00;05;36;02
Speaker 6
Yes, lawyers will tell you they've had people who didn't properly get notified.
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Speaker 5
Let's talk about DACA.
00;05;37;29 - 00;06;02;10
Speaker 6
Doca renewals are taking a lot longer to renew than they used to. So I interviewed a guy in Park City who worked for a hotel up there, and he applied to renew his Doca, just kind of right on schedule. And then it was taking months and he still hadn't heard, like his employer wrote a letter of support. He contacted, like, John Curtis office, and he still didn't get a response to the point where his work permit ended up expiring.
00;06;02;10 - 00;06;13;14
Speaker 6
And then he lost his job. And I did connect with him a few weeks later and his status was renewed so he can work again. But at this point, his employer has filled the job, so he's dealing with that.
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Speaker 5
How many times did he go through that before this one?
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Speaker 6
5 or 6? Because I think he's been on it for about 12 years and you have to renew every two years. Yeah.
00;06;23;10 - 00;06;28;27
Speaker 5
Then we were county voted to start getting reimbursed for any help they give to Ice. What was the deal with that?
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Speaker 6
Yeah. So this has been in the works for a while. The big, beautiful bill that passed last summer set aside money to reimburse local agencies that collaborate with Ice. We were county in August. Just kind of signed the agreement that gets the process going for a reimbursement. And so far this year, that average is about eight hours a week.
00;06;49;15 - 00;07;00;17
Speaker 6
There's two deputies who are trained under the 287 G program. Basically to take people into custody on behalf of Ice. The county will build Ice for those hours based on those deputies salaries.
00;07;00;24 - 00;07;03;12
Speaker 5
You spoke to what was it, Sheriff? Is that right?
00;07;03;13 - 00;07;33;02
Speaker 6
Yeah. He said like. Yeah, like we're going after criminals. But I've done some reporting earlier that's. It's more complicated than that. Data from the from Ice release or the Deportation Data Project shows that a good chunk of people arrested in Ogden under the 287 G program don't have any criminal history. And there are a couple cases I know about because I've talked with the people involved where they were pulled over by a deputy for like a traffic infraction.
00;07;33;04 - 00;07;53;17
Speaker 6
And then, you know, the deputy ended up taking them into custody. And it sounds like what happened was ice just Aspen to like the deputy had contacted Ice at some point being like, here's who I have. I don't know the super nitty gritty details about what happened, because even though it's our sheriff's deputies, when they were acting on behalf of Ice, that body camera footage belongs to Ice.
00;07;53;18 - 00;08;16;07
Speaker 6
So the county won't give it to me. I have to request it from the federal government, which actually I did for one of them. And then I rejected my request because I didn't have, like written permission from the man who was arrested. Which is all to say, like it's not just criminals or getting arrested under 287 G. Yeah, I'm working on a story now, kind of analyzing where in Utah ISIS made the most arrests.
00;08;16;07 - 00;08;40;15
Speaker 6
So we have some new like city by city data. West Valley is, unsurprisingly, the city with the most Ice arrests. That's also where the ice like fields office is located. And then Ogden was up there because we house a jail. There are a lot of custodial arrests, which is basically people from jail being transferred to Ice. So where we are in the list depends on whether.
00;08;40;16 - 00;08;52;25
Speaker 6
And then actually Ogden also has a lot of 287 arrests. Like almost a third of 287 arrests in the entire state have been in Ogden. Oh, wow. Ogden is definitely up there for ice activity. It's in the top five.
00;08;52;28 - 00;09;00;22
Speaker 5
Are you aware of any local law enforcement, sheriff, OPD, any of that that has like a stated policy on cooperating with Ice?
00;09;00;25 - 00;09;27;00
Speaker 6
I'm trying to figure out after the video that Kevin Lindell took. Like what exactly the policy is. And I think that officer was in a really tough situation and didn't really know what he was supposed to do. You hear him calling his supervisor and saying, like, I don't know if I'm going to get in trouble. So, yeah, I would like to know more about what exactly an officer is supposed to do when ice like they're right there and they know that Ice wants to arrest this person.
00;09;27;04 - 00;09;34;01
Speaker 6
I would like to know more about what they're supposed to do and whether there is a policy on the books or not.
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Speaker 5
Yeah.
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Speaker 7
What's going on on community is jeopardizing our police department. People are concerned about our constitutional rights. We have a problem. And I think y'all are in a place where you have a little more leverage to fix things than I do.
00;09;49;08 - 00;09;55;05
Speaker 2
And immigration isn't the only place where people are asking how much local law enforcement is connected to something much bigger.
00;09;55;10 - 00;09;57;21
Speaker 1
Which brings us back to flock cameras.
00;09;57;24 - 00;10;06;22
Speaker 2
The flock camera story keeps getting bigger. Ogden uses the license plate cameras pretty heavily, and the residents brought them up again at this week's City Council meeting.
00;10;06;23 - 00;10;18;24
Speaker 1
Meanwhile, Washington Terrace has gone from. Maybe we'll try flock to actually know. Now, some council members want to talk about the cameras Weber County already has inside the city.
00;10;18;26 - 00;10;24;01
Speaker 2
Washington Terrace canceled its own three camera trial, but that doesn't make the county's cameras disappear.
00;10;24;04 - 00;10;33;17
Speaker 1
At Tuesday's meeting, council member Zouma asked whether the city could just ask the county to turn those cameras off or remove them.
00;10;33;20 - 00;10;42;08
Speaker 2
And nobody seemed completely sure what that would mean for the county's flock contract. So the waiting to tell a meeting with the Sheriff's office on September 30th to get more answers.
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Speaker 1
And that feels like exactly the conversation we should be having. Not just do cameras catch criminals. They do.
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Speaker 2
But who owns the camera? Who controls the data? Who can search it? And can a city say, we don't want that here?
00;10;57;20 - 00;11;03;05
Speaker 1
Washington Terrace may be about to find out.
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Speaker 2
And that's all for now.
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Speaker 1
We'll see you on the next one in.