Utah Highway Patrol troopers have a much different job in southeastern Utah than their counterparts along the Wasatch Front.
Yet the June 16 fatal shooting of trooper Dennis "Dee" Lund near Green River and the Dec. 11 death of a trooper in Salt Lake City point to the dangers of the job regardless of the location.Unlike I-15 in Salt Lake, Davis and Utah counties, there is no bumper-to-bumper congestion during rush hour. In fact, there is no rush hour.
From Green River, you have to drive 45 miles to Moab just to find a traffic light. And the 105-mile stretch of I-70 between Green River and Salina has the reputation of being the longest span of interstate without a gas station or other services.
Troopers can drive for miles and miles and see nothing but miles and miles.
But while troopers here do not have to deal with congestion, they also find themselves working in complete isolation, sometimes without help and beyond the radio range that connects them to dispatchers or other officers.
That's why being 6-foot-3 and weighing 250 pounds is an advantage, says UHP trooper Phil Waters. "I think being a big guy down here helps a lot. On stops like DUIs, people are more likely to argue with the smaller guys."
Waters said troopers in a potentially dangerous situation often find themselves 20 or 30 minutes from the next nearest officer, if one is available at all.
Waters once radioed for a backup after an arrest only to wait and wait and then find out no one was available to come. "I had to let the guy drive his own car to jail."
Waters had finished his shift on June 16 when troopers engaged in a chase with two teenagers who had stolen gas from a station near I-70 in Thompson, east of Green River. The duo was driving a car taken in Indiana from the mother of one of the youths. They fled Indiana and were headed toward California.
During the chase, Waters' fellow trooper Lund was shot and killed as troopers and the occupants of the fleeing car exchanged gunfire.
Chasing juveniles is a regular part of a trooper's job. Juveniles who steal gas are often driving a stolen car, Waters said. What was unusual in the chase last week is that the juveniles "started shooting at people."
Lund was one of four troopers involved in the chase. The concentration of troopers in the area was high that evening because they were getting ready for "Span 70," a multi-state operation intent on trapping felons on I-70, Waters said. The operation began several hours later at midnight.
Troopers, Moab police and Grand and Emery county deputies regularly help each other. Green River, which straddles the Grand and Emery county lines, is patrolled entirely by Emery deputies.
But the times when an officer has to work without a backup, "That's our major concern," Waters said.
Almost every situation begins with a traffic stop. "One week everybody you stop is an Aunt Mary or Uncle Bob. And then the next week, everybody's going to jail," he said. "If you've got someone stopped and they scare you - and that's happened to everybody - you just back off."
The nearest help may be miles away, but if a trooper has to "back off" and let a threatening motorist drive away, there is a good chance his help has time to set up and wait for that person somewhere down the road.
Working the open stretches of road means knowing that making an arrest can be an all-day event. "In a DUI, it's going to be one hour, minimum, for a wrecker to arrive" to take the car away, Waters said. "Then it's an hour drive to the jail and an hour back. You get to know the person really well by the time you get to jail. They either hate you or they're your best friend, crying on your shoulder and telling you what a bad thing they did."
Troopers also know how to use each oasis to their advantage.
Twenty miles east of Green River, for example, I-70 intersects at Crescent Junction with U-191, which leads to Moab. The cafe there is run by a former judge, who has given every officer in the area a key to the place. He lets them keep their paperwork and a blood-alcohol tester there for sobriety tests.
Waters lives in Moab and has worked on the six-member Green River crew for the three years he has been with the UHP. He said he grew up in a small town in Montana and likes living and working in a rural area. "You know everybody. That's what I like about a small town."
He prefers the atmosphere to Salt Lake's congestion.
When Waters graduated from the police academy and began working in Green River, he said the supervising sergeant, Steve Rapich, told him: "I want people who make decisions because you don't have anybody to call and ask: `How do I do this?' "
Waters describes the area as being best for officers who don't need a lot of supervision. "There's no brass around here, that's for sure."
"I'm more conscious of the traffic," he said, comparing his work with that of a trooper along the Wasatch Front.
"What happened to (trooper) Joey Brumett seems more dangerous than the chances of a fellow shooting you at the side of the road," he said, comparing last week's shooting of trooper Lund with the Dec. 11 incident in Salt Lake County where Brumett was hit by a motorist and killed while trying to retrieve a tire that was blocking southbound lanes of I-15 just as the morning traffic rush was building up.
"Everybody that's here pretty much loves it here," Waters said, but I-70 has a stigma about it that can make troopers who have never worked in the area shy away. I-70 is infamous for its large-volume drug busts and carries nicknames like "cocaine lane" and "cocaine alley." The nicknames aren't the focus here. "To us, it's just where we work."