The Deseret News and KSL editorial boards hosted Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall in a Zoom call Friday morning, a day after a violent protest on city streets followed a justifiable homicide ruling in the shooting death of Bernardo Palacios-Carbajal by police.
Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill detailed the circumstances surrounding the shooting, repeatedly showing video and pictures of the drawn-out encounter, revealing what led to his ruling of justifiable homicide.
The mayor responded to our questions about the decision, the protest, and the ongoing effort to battle COVID-19 during a time of surging cases.
The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Deseret News: What’s your reaction to yesterday’s decision and protest?
Mayor Erin Mendenhall: Well, I’ll take those separately, if you don’t mind. The decision and the evidence, or the case that Sim Gill presented, I think, shows that Mr. Gill did his work, as he’s been elected to do within the bounds of the law and the structure of the law as it is today. I think he did a very thorough and exceptional job of that. And I think that there was more evidence than I expected to show the justification of the actions of the Salt Lake City police officers.
And for the protests, I feel frustrated that the space that we’ve given protesters since May 30 to exercise their First Amendment rights resulted yesterday in such destruction and violence.
DN: In your statement, you made a distinction. You said the police officers did act according to their training and state law. But you seemed to make a distinction between something that’s morally correct and something that’s justified. Do you feel like the actions of the officers were morally correct?
EM: What I meant by that piece of my statement is that the protests, locally and nationally, have been calling for justice that, we see with Sim’s decision yesterday, would mean retribution outside of the law. And that, you know, if we’re able to translate the intent of the protests last night, and certainly much of the commentary that is happening in the social realm right now, that wasn’t justice for so many people. That there’s very clearly, I think, in our local conversation and at the national level, a moral disconnect for many people between what is justified today, and what the law should be reshaped to reflect morally somehow in the future. So that’s what I was referring to. Not a judgment on whether or not the officers’ actions were moral.
DN: You talked about how the next step is to look at how this relates to city policy. Is there a difference between what occurred, the response of Mr. Gill legally, versus a city policy? What what are you looking to analyze?
EM: Well, I’ll start by saying that we’re relying heavily on the Commission on Racial Equity in Policing to do what we’ve asked them to do and bringing together a broad coalition of community voices as they put this commission together. I’m hearing that people are distrustful of government. I get that. People are distrustful of white elected people. I hear that. I get that. That’s why we’ve put together this Commission on Racial Equity in Policing. There are no elected officials on that commission.
The committee, the core commission members, there’s six of them, are putting together the makeup of that committee with the broad request that they bring a wide spectrum of the different voices and experiences and backgrounds and objectives that we’re hearing from in the community together. And our intention is to empower them with the facts, as they exist in our city’s laws and state statute, as to how we can operate and what we can’t do as a city yet, the makeup of the budget and whatever other information they might need. And also equipping them with a professional facilitator, which the core committee members are selecting themselves, to decide how they’re going to operate and come away with recommendations. So we will be leaning heavily on them as they assess our policing policies, culture and budget for the department in Salt Lake City. And this is something that no other city in the state has done. And hopefully there will also be state legislative recommendations.
So, there’s the commission piece of it. But in the meantime, our Civilian Review Board — and you know that Salt Lake City and West Valley City are the only cities currently that have CRBs in operation. — and ours is staffed by a person who has significant law enforcement background and is not a part of the police department. Their office actually resides within HR (human resources) for Salt Lake City. It is an independent body, but there are things we can do to improve the makeup of the CRB. One of those is that the makeup of the CRB could better reflect the diversity of our community, be more representative of our community. And there are some openings on that board that we are actively seeking to fill right now. So I’ll just lob out there also that anyone can go to Salt Lake City’s boards and commissions webpage and fill out a single application, and select as many of the boards and commissions that they’re interested in, of which the CRB is one. And if folks are interested in participating, they can do so.
DN: The Commission on Racial Equity in Policing — that’s a new group?
EM: It’s an entirely new group.
DN: The CRB is the Civilian Review Board of what happened with potentially criminal events. The other is looking for some kind of other change, or can you draw the distinction?
EM: That’s a great question. The CRB looks at officer-involved critical incidents. So there’s a case — as you know, state legislation changed a few years ago so that no police department investigates itself. As soon as there is an OICI (officer-involved critical incident), we call them, it’s kicked to another department, and then that goes to the DA, in our case. And then it comes back to the city for the Internal Affairs Investigation, the IA, which we’re working on right now, the CRB just looks at those cases, the IA happens and then the CRB is sort of the counterbalance outside of the department. It’s made up of volunteers from the community that reviews whether or not there should be discipline or any other employment action taken.
They issue a recommendation to Chief (Mike) Brown, who by state statute is the only one who can make a determination on the firing of police officers. The Commission on Racial Equity in Policing, a brand new body that’ll be probably one of the largest boards or commissions that we have in the city, I think it could be more than 50 people. And they have a budget. So the council put $100,000 aside. The professional facilitator will definitely be taking some of that. But we’re hoping to give these volunteers a stipend for their participation because we’re asking for a very significant work product, which we don’t ask our boards and commissions for, typically.
We’ve asked them to do this within a year. And that’s another thing we don’t usually do with boards or commissions. And they will be checking in bimonthly with the council, and of course I’ll be there at those public meetings, if there are immediate steps we can take. So we are looking for recommendations that will come to the mayor and the Council on anything that we can do to improve equity and in policing for Salt Lake City.
DN: You talked about systemic reforms that are needed. Do you have in your mind right now some systemic reforms you’d like to see?
EM: Do want me to talk about the city or the state?
DN: Talk about both.
EM: Sure. I know that there’s a cadre of legislative items that are being talked about with our our friends at the Legislature and people who are wanting to influence the next session. One of the things, I think, that would be interesting that I haven’t yet heard come up in the list — that I’m sure you’re aware of — would be requiring potentially that our district attorney make a determination of justification and decide to charge a crime within a certain period of time after the separate agency turns over their investigation to the DA. Right now, there’s no time period on that. And we saw Mr. Gill set aside his other cases in order to expedite this one.
So whether that’s 90 days or 60 days, I don’t know. And certainly there’s some work capacity things to address. But that would be something that could happen. And absolutely, I would like us to be in dialogue with the state. And I will be working on this on behalf of Salt Lake City to consider changes to our use of deadly force code at the state.
DN: How would you change it?
EM: Well, let me say that the Salt Lake City Commission will likely be looking at recommendations as they work with city attorneys and our police attorney to review what could be improvements to that code. There’s always the ability for a municipality to enact a more strict rule than the state does, of course. We cannot loosen the standards they’ve set but we can set more strict ones. So I’ll be looking for the commission to also give advice on that as they look at what other cities around the country, as we’re in a state of evolution right now, are coming up with to make that policy better so that we have less lethal interactions between our police and the public.
It could look potentially at exceptions if the officer is the aggressor, and I know there’s a lot of definitions even in that statement. But they could look at whether or not officers or others are in imminent danger and no other use of force is available. So I think we’re at the beginning of the technical contemplation of how that state code could change.
DN: Do you agree the key learning of the past months is that the nation, the city, the state need to look at how we police? How do we use deadly force?
EM: When we get down to the brass tacks of the tragedies, and the determinations around the tragedy, or the actions that led to that tragedy, it comes down to what that code is in any state. And Sim’s determination showed that our officers acted absolutely according to the law and their trainings. That gives me great confidence moving forward. If we had officers who were found unjustified in their actions, we not only have to be looking at the code itself, which we just talked about, but an example of our department officers working outside of their training and their law.
DN: Mayor, do you think the law, whether it is city or state or the national system, does in fact give police officers too much leniency when it comes to lethal force?
EM: I do.
DN: Can you expand on that? I mean, we’ve been talking about how these commissions will be looking at changes and how the state might need to make some changes to its lethal force. But those are long-term changes, and I think people want to see changes now.
EM: OK, so I hear two parts to your question. There’s an expediency to change part, but you were also asking in the beginning about what kind of changes to the code. Was that your question about the code?
DN: Yes. Just the fact that you’re saying you think it gives police officers too much leniency when it comes to lethal force. So how do you change that?
EM: Well, I think the conversation just a moment ago is the how, which is we’re beginning the technical work of how that could change. It’s important to me that both our officers and the public be made more safe by whatever changes might be contemplated. And I’m not sure, actually, that is a narrowing, or, you know, that makes the keyhole that we’re imagining possible here smaller. I think that safety for both sides of that kind of an interaction needs to be paramount.
Salt Lake City has the greatest police department in the state of Utah, quite possibly in the country. I’m not saying that we don’t have need to change and that we don’t have problems from time to time with officers or in the department. We do, as any department does. But our department’s commitment to being the best-trained and doing their jobs in a culture of policing each other is something that’s been in place for a long time, and that we are going to work to enhance and expand that culture of accountability for each other.
And not just being accountable for your own actions, but you are accountable for the person that you’re working with.
When we look at how many police interactions we have over the course of a year, and layer over that the code that gives the authority to officers to use lethal force — and in no way to diminish the tragedies that do occur — our officers exhibit restraint. And I think that they they show their quality of training and character by the fact that we don’t have more of those, because I think the code would allow for that.
DN: I’d love to have you just talk for a minute about the challenge of navigating a lot of these issues with the instant-certainty side of when things happen, people immediately are drawing full-blown conclusions on things. We have a citizenry that is not real interested in nuance and complexities in terms of the situation. So a lot of things just get boiled down to a bumper sticker or, you know, one police incident suddenly becomes every police incident. How are you navigating that part of it?
EM: I’m hesitating because I don’t want to lump everyone into a basket. But some of the narrative of sound bites that is pervasive on our city streets and in the community rhetoric right now exemplifies that we’ve reached a flashpoint. And historically for our nation, or even locally, when we look at the way that I think the inland port was a flashpoint, has been a flashpoint, rather, for air quality frustration, that’s when we see the public lose patience for complexity and nuance. And, I mean, that’s valid, in many ways, to say we’re done with patience, we’re done with waiting. And for some to say we’re done trusting, we’re done with collaboration, because here is the tipping point, or this incident is a tipping point now and we’ve reached a climax.
This is a tipping point for racial injustice as a nation, and local events have fanned that frustration into the flames of protests that we saw last night. So I understand that over the course of humanity, this happens.
DN: Mayor, are you going to have a state of emergency or put a curfew on tonight, Saturday and Sunday?
EM: I have done nothing to advance any of that at this point. I do not want to do that.
DN: Do you support the governor’s action last night doing that?
EM: Sure. I think what we saw with the curfew before and, you know, the fact that the patch of land at the Capitol, although it’s absolutely within Salt Lake City is sort of its own island of jurisdiction. The public is, I think, 99% unaware of that, unaware that those aren’t Salt Lake City police officers on that land, that’s Highway Patrol. They follow a different set of guidance, in terms of who’s making the decisions.
The COVID-19 pandemic
DN: Let’s turn to COVID-19 and the surge in cases. Do you think the governor should have issued a mandate to wear a mask?
EM: I do. I believe that wearing masks is an incredibly low barrier way for us to prevent the spread of this virus which has taken a foothold in our state over the last month.
DN: Have you have you been able to assess enforcement of of the Salt Lake County mask policy or adherence to that?
EM: We anecdotally assess adherence to it. For example, I had a meeting with our airport crew this morning. They’ve said that when they posted the signs of the legal mandate of the mask wearing on the doors of the airport, they’ve seen, I don’t know if I’d say dramatic, but a very perceptible increase in compliance of people wearing masks in the airport. We monitor at our parks, of course. And we’re also seeing an increase in mask wearing.
And we’re hearing from some business owners who have said they’re grateful for the mandate because they can point to the government requiring their employees and patrons to wear a mask and not have to say it’s my own policy. So, yes, we are seeing that the mandate has been effective. But we haven’t been doing any legal or criminal enforcement of it, in terms of the class A misdemeanor.
DN: Do you know of any single instance where you have?
EM: No. None. Not even in the county am I aware.
DN: People are wondering when we’ll be able to move the needle for Salt Lake City. What would you say to them?
EM: Well, I kind of want to share a screen with you. I’m not going to share anything you don’t have. This is what I keep on my desktop every day. The county’s COVID dashboard on Salt Lake City. And, I mean, it tells its own story there. But we also receive city-specific trajectory data, typically weekly, but sometimes it’s biweekly from the county health department that helps us have a little bit more granular sense of where we’re going and what it’s looking like. And it is not declining enough or stabilizing enough for us to feel safe with our public health experts in decreasing our our standards at this point.
DN: As we look at that chart, when I see things on the low end at the beginning, that’s when we were in a red situation in the state. And now I see them up high, and we’re yellow and in some places green and it doesn’t make any sense to me. Should the city be back in a red situation?
EM: We would like to avoid a red situation for economic purposes, but the public side of what red means, if we looked at the state’s definitions, and I appreciate if I can insert here that the city doesn’t set the standards under the different color distinctions. Like right now, I know that schools are looking at what the district is saying. They’re looking at what that means for sports play. And they’re saying, well, why can’t you just allow for our teams to play? Well, I get to consult on what level we’re at regarding our public health, the color, but the state and the governor set what those standards play out to be.
DN: Do you think the color-coding system is a good one? Or should we have come up with some other metric or something a little bit more nuanced? It seems like now the farther move toward green, the harder it is to move back again.
EM: Absolutely. And I think that we see that appetite of our Legislature to move back ever decreasing. So I will say, I don’t have an answer, a good answer for you on whether or not we should have come up with a different system. But I think to the need to create more nuance in it, we have seen that in the governor’s allowance of our county and city to mandate masks. That wasn’t something that was contemplated in the system when it was created. So I think that we have some flexibility to work with the governor on special exceptions to the color code, and I appreciate that.
DN: Mayor ... what went wrong? Why is COVID-19 surging?
EM: That’s a great question for our public health experts. It is awkward for cities, for our capital city in particular, to be dealing with such an impactful circumstance as this pandemic is on our residents well-being, on our economic well-being, on our city’s vitality, and have the crux of the issue be something that we do not have in in-house expertise on. We don’t have public health experts in the city. No city in this state does. And we rely on the county for that. It’s unique in that regard. I don’t have a department of public health that I can meet with daily. And the county has been very collaborative, and we appreciate that.
Anyway, if I were to answer your question, I would be opining on the myriad of reasons that we perceive at the city level — from economic development to the economic security of our residents and insecurity of our residents and the housing demands — but that’s a really a public health question that you were asking.
DN: Let me try one more time though. ... In your opinion, has something gone wrong? Whether it’s the state, the city, the county, could something have been done differently to prevent this surge, so we’d be in a better place?
EM: Yes, it seems so. And I don’t think we can yet call this Monday morning quarterbacking, because we’re still in the game. So the need for us to critically analyze why our numbers have grown so dramatically, while what we have supported is a very robust plan with the Utah Leads Together evolution over the last several months and the color coding restrictions. I think it shows that the state of Utah has endeavored to lead well, and yet the decisions of individuals across the state to expose themselves and their communities to certain risks has played counter to the best intentions at the state level.
I think it’s obvious that we’ve worried about this as the capital city because we have continuously requested, based on our public health data, to be in a more strict designation than other parts of the state, and also requesting to have masks mandated legally in our city and our county. So I don’t think that’s a surprise that we’ve perceived the plan to not match our actual public health needs well enough. It reminds me of the conversations around individual choice that we’ve had for a long time around air quality and asking people to not drive on red air days and to not burn fires when we’re leading up to an inversion. And yet, we’ve seen less than stellar return on that approach with the community of individual choice, and this situation reminds me of that.
DN: I just wanted to follow up a little bit on that question. I know we saw recently statements from the House Speaker and Senate President of why they don’t support a statewide mask requirement. I know you and Mayor Wilson have advocated for that statewide mask mandate. Earlier you talked about individual choice and how some people choosing not to protect themselves or others could be exacerbating this surge. Do you think it’s because the public’s getting mixed messages from state leaders who aren’t willing to go as far as a statewide mask mandate? Were there leadership choices that have fed into this situation we’re seeing now with this surge?
EM: I think that at the most general level, masks have been politicized and that’s been our greatest barrier to accepting them as what they are, which is a public health tool.
DN: Is there any way to overcome that?
EM: I can’t help but think that the increase in cases and people’s proximity to the virus itself, in terms of knowing someone or who contracts the virus or contracting it themselves, will be a potentially tragic way for the public to understand how very transmittable this disease is and how simple a preventative action wearing a mask is. This deep politicization in the national environment, which is hyper political right now, with a presidential election and social change being demanded in our streets, it will be difficult to depoliticize anything right now.
DN: Do you feel like you have enough unity or connective tissue with the mayor of Salt Lake County and with the governor’s office? Do you feel like you’re aligned with the city, the county and the state?
EM: What do you mean by aligned?
DN: Are you working together? Are you at cross purposes? Does the fact that you have a mask mandate and want one for the state, does that hurt the messaging for you? I don’t see the three of you standing together in a press conference, for example.
EM: Let me pull, just for a moment, on the frustration of not having a public health department. I didn’t intend for that to be interpreted that I want a public health department. I am not making any kind of a declaration about cities needing their own public health experts because we’re at some sort of a conflict with our county ones. I’m saying that when we look at crises that occur in the city, whether it’s an earthquake or flood or even civil unrest, typically cities have the tools and the staffing to address, direct or give us the direct information about how to make the best choices on that. And this public health crisis is unique in that regard. I didn’t mean it as, you know, they’re going this way and we want to go this way and I don’t have access. That’s not what I meant. It’s just a unique circumstance for managing a situation for a mayor.
But am I aligned with County Mayor Wilson and Gov. Herbert? As you asked that, I felt a little bit surprised, because I feel quite connected to those leaders, in terms of access and frank conversation and safety in having differing opinions. So I have regular communication with both of them and others in leadership around the county in the state. So I do feel that we have a very working relationship, where we have the regularity of contact and the security and having differing opinions.
You don’t see us standing together, and in my opinion, in part because I’m not doing a lot of standing together with anyone in a physical sense right now. And I know Mayor Wilson, you know, everyone’s making their own choices on that. But I hadn’t thought about the physical coming together and standing together being perceived as a disconnect between these branches or these levels of government.
DN: Any final word on the safety of Salt Lake City residents during this time?
EM: We have been reviewing every tool that we have as a city entity to keep our our people safe. And by our people, I mean our first responders, and our public, and our residents, and our business owners and everyone who is in the city. We are prepared for tonight, whatever it might bring, and we appreciate the partnerships throughout the state that are helping in our preparedness. We aren’t going to underestimate the potential of the protests tonight. And I implore people to stop hurting people and stop breaking things because it is not affecting change whatsoever.