The writing was on the wall for former Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown 

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• Former Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown retired from the department in February.

A decade as a metropolitan police chief is an exceptional run, one that Mike Brown can be proud of. But earlier this year, his tenure at the Salt Lake City Police Department came to an abrupt end.

The plague of homelessness on Utah's capital city is metastasizing—taking a toll on businesses, neighborhoods and the unfortunate who find themselves without roofs or restrooms. As she entered her second term in January 2024, pressure continued to build on Mayor Erin Mendenhall from various quarters to get campers off the streets and crime rates down.

In November 2023, Mendenhall ordered a crackdown on homeless camps. "People don't have to go into shelters," she said, "but living in our public spaces is not an option."

At the time, the mayor expressed confidence that Brown could get the job done. Asked by The Salt Lake Tribune if she intended to keep Brown on as chief if elected to a second term, Mendenhall demurred, saying that conversation was for another day.

Brown retired on February 28 of this year, after 33 years at the Salt Lake City Police Department.

"There is never a perfect time to step away from a career that has defined you, challenged you, and given you a profound sense of purpose," Brown said in a prepared statement. "Policing has never been just a job for me—it has been a calling and a lifelong commitment to public service."

Soon after Brown's retirement announcement, the mayor said publicly that it was her decision—and hers alone—that he step down. But observers say the writing was on the wall for Brown's departure since at least 2020, when the union representing Salt Lake City police officers overwhelmingly took a vote of "no confidence" in the chief.

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• Wendy Garvin of Unsheltered Utah said that camping enforcement has escalated in the city.

Truth be told, no police chief can solve homelessness, said Wendy Garvin, executive director of Unsheltered Utah.

"That requires housing and right now, Salt Lake County is 1,000 shelter beds short," Garvin reported. "There is no place for them to go."

Garvin noted that Brown had lost the support of many homeless advocates and care providers. "No one trusted him," she said.

Brown became chief in 2015, as homelessness in Salt Lake City was spiking. He took the post after his predecessor, Chris Burbank, was pushed out in the midst of a political storm, when then-Mayor Ralph Becker sought cover during a tight reelection bid that he ultimately lost to Jackie Biskupski.

Police chiefs come and go with the political winds, Burbank said recently. He noted that the average tenure of a metropolitan police chief is between 2 and 3 years.

Like Garvin, Burbank said that Brown's ouster was a long time coming. He had heard over and over again from former colleagues in the police department and City Hall that the mayor was getting rid of the chief.

"I will tell you, [Mendenhall] said many, many times to her constituents she was going to get rid of Brown," Burbank said. "Everyone was upset."

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• Former Mayor Rocky Anderson is critical of the city’s response to unsanctioned camping.

Former Mayor Rocky Anderson had been vocal about Mendenhall's police department and its inability to get homeless campers off the streets—something he highlighted in his unsuccessful 2023 campaign to unseat her. In a recent interview, Anderson said there was "no accountability whatsoever for police who had engaged in blatant misconduct and failure to do their jobs."

Anderson faulted Mendenhall's administration and the Salt Lake City Police Department for destroying homeless encampments and confiscating tents, sleeping bags and other necessities while providing no place for the unsheltered to go. In addition, Anderson explained that homelessness in Salt Lake City is having a severe impact on businesses, to the point where some packed up and left.

The former mayor pointed to Haven for Hope in San Antonio, Texas, as an approach that could serve as a model.

"Salt Lake City," Anderson said, "could quickly eliminate homeless encampments by providing a sanctioned campus that includes space for campers along with showers, laundry, meals and case managers."

The Homeless Problem
More than 9,800 Utahns became homeless for the first time last year, marking a nearly 10% increase from 2022, according to Utah's Office of Homeless Services. Across the nation, more than 771,800 people were homeless in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). That is up from 653,104 in 2023.

Salt Lake City businessman David Ibarra began voicing concerns surrounding homelessness in a 2019 opinion piece in the Deseret News, months before Mendenhall took office in 2020.

Ibarra, who unsuccessfully ran for mayor that same year, was among a group that filed suit against Salt Lake City, alleging that the administration of then-Mayor Jackie Biskupski was "allowing homeless encampments to proliferate."

The suit included images of damaged property, human waste, trash, tents and drugs. "Although this is a nuisance case," the complaint read, "it is also a plea for sanity and common sense, and a plea to address the humanitarian crisis that the city's intentional actions (and inactions) have caused and continue to cause."

Nonetheless, the case was dismissed with prejudice in March 2024. Third District Judge Andrew Stone held that plaintiffs "failed to establish that (Salt Lake City) owes them a special duty to remedy or 'control' unsheltered encampments beyond that owed to the general public."

A drumbeat of complaints persisted from residents, businesses and elected officials as Salt Lake City and state legislators grappled with homeless issues. Then, in December of 2024, Utah's Republican leaders—Gov. Spencer Cox, Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams, R-Layton, and Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper—threw down the gauntlet with a letter to Mendenhall.

"Local law enforcement is the front end of the system to appropriately address the disorder that we are experiencing in our capital city," they wrote. "The ineffectiveness of [the police department] has become glaringly apparent."

They demanded that Mendenhall create a new public safety plan before the Legislature convened on January 21, in effect telling the mayor to clean up her city or the state would intervene and clean it up for her.

The mayor responded in writing: "The system, as it exists today, is really not designed to create accountability or remedy the services for this population, so we see a cycling of people with many arrests. It's not one part of the system's fault. It is a system as a whole that has to be changed."

• Benjamin Wood
• Mayor Erin Mendenhall selected Brian Redd to replace Brown as Salt Lake City’s police chief.

It was the last straw. In short order, Brown was gone and the mayor tapped Brian Redd as Salt Lake City's new police chief.

Redd had been the director of the Utah Department of Corrections; he also is a former top official with the state Department of Public Safety and one-time Utah Highway Patrol trooper.

Salt Lake City's new public safety plan calls for intensified patrols and consequences for repeat offenders of the "no camping" dictum, such as citations and arrests.

Redd-y and Raring
In a recent interview with ABC4, Redd said the public safety plan includes coordinating with treatment resources, deploying social services and increasing funding for affordable housing.

"You can still enforce the law and hold people accountable while treating them humanely and with dignity, he said.

For the past decade, Utah communities large and small have been wrestling with the growth of the unhoused population and the camps that spring up wherever there is open space. In June of 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities and towns can ban sleeping and camping in public places, overruling lower courts that had held it was cruel and unusual punishment to keep people from camping in public places if they had nowhere else to go.

Experts contend that communities cannot arrest their way out of homelessness. A group of 57 social scientists submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing against the criminalization of homelessness. "The enforcement of anti-homeless laws has wide-ranging and lingering negative impacts on those experiencing homelessness and creates significant barriers to exiting homelessness," they wrote.

Salt Lake's new plan is like the old plan, remarked Garvin. "There's just more harassment [of homeless campers] right now," she said.

The unsheltered population is being cited and arrested. They are usually released quickly, unless they have pending warrants.

What that means in essence, said Garvin, is that campers have to relocate more often: "The police are very aware that after homeless people get citations they will move a block or two away."

The current crackdown on camping is not the first. In August of 2017, Salt Lake City police, along with the County Sheriff's Department and the Utah Highway Patrol, launched "Operation Rio Grande," arresting dozens for drug offenses near the homeless shelter on Rio Grande Street downtown.

The operation's strategic plan called for "stronger camping restrictions and enforcement." It also referenced a "ban [on] camping on public streets and waterways."

An unintended consequence of Operation Rio Grande was that it pushed the homeless population into residential neighborhoods, particularly in Ballpark and on the west side along the Jordan River.

With the aid of state funding, Salt Lake City and County—along with area non-governmental organizations (NGOs)—embarked in 2019 on a plan to build three new homeless resource centers to replace the aging shelter on Rio Grande Street. The facilities were aimed at coordinating resources so people could find housing within weeks, rather than months. But real estate prices jumped, rents skyrocketed and the strategy was stymied for a dearth of affordable housing.

The homeless population is not static. According to PolicyMattersInc.org, "Various economic elements, including income inequality, housing affordability, job market fluctuations and economic policy contribute to the increasing rates of homelessness in the United States"—things over which police chiefs have no control.