Ali Noorani [00:00:12] Hey there. How are you? This week, we’re going to talk to Salt Lake Police Chief Mike Brown about keeping a growing and changing community safe.
Mike Brown [00:00:21] with passing of this legislation. I think it’s a good start, but I would like to see it go one step further because, I mean, in Salt Lake City, in Utah, there’s about 32,000 individuals there of DACA status, not a huge number. But when you start looking at as as people, as mothers, fathers, as you look at young explorers that want to serve, they’re, you know, a police department that really puts a face to the problem.
Ali Noorani [00:00:48] From the National Immigration Forum, I’m Ali Noorani. And this is Only in America. For local law enforcement, building trust in their communities is key to doing their jobs, but for many immigrant communities, contact law enforcement is associated with discrimination, surveillance and often a risk of deportation. So the question is, how can local police build a better relationship with their communities? Well, for one, recruiting and diverse roster of law enforcement who look like and belong to the communities they serve. In Utah, the state’s changing demographics and growing immigrant population has led to a need for police departments to understand the needs of its community. And the leadership is being shown both at the local level and at the state level in Utah. In fact, recently the governor of Utah signed new legislation that would allow legal permanent residents to become local law enforcement officers. Local leaders like our guest today are working not just to support solutions like this particular state law, but to implement innovative tactics at the local level, to keep the community safe, but also to advocate for dreamers and others within the immigrant community. Our guest today is Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown. He served in the department since 1991 and became chief in 2016. We talked about what his department is doing to build a pathway for a diverse range of young people, including DACA recipients, to get involved in law enforcement and the statewide policies Utah’s putting forward that would make it easier for them to serve.
Ali Noorani [00:02:27] Chief, thank you very, very much for joining. Over the years, we have really enjoyed working with you and your team. So I actually wanted to start the conversation with a little bit about yourself. What got you to Salt Lake, what got you to join and then lead the police department?
Mike Brown [00:02:43] Well, that’s a long story. I’ll tell you, I’m from Salt Lake City. I grew up I grew up in the southern part of this county. I’m a second generation law enforcement. My father was a Salt Lake County deputy. So I’m very- I grew up in that family, in that culture. I really never thought I would follow my father. I was going to the University of Utah. I was going to be a doctor until I had completed most of my premed prerequisites, until I hit organic chemistry. And it is not my thing, and so I remember the day I came home and I told my mother, I said, Mom, I am not going to med school. And she she cried and she was upset. So I’m going to go into law enforcement. And then and so I did. And I started here with the Salt Lake City Police Department in 1991. I served many different assignments here, worked my way up through the ranks. In 2015 I became the interim chief. 2016 I became the chief and I’ve been the chief now going on six years. So the day I was sworn in, my mother finally said, OK, I forgive you for not going to med school.
Ali Noorani [00:03:55] That’s a very demanding mother. So tell me a little bit about how Salt Lake has changed over time as you’ve grown up and as you’ve been a member of the force?
Mike Brown [00:04:06] Well, it’s gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. Our force has grown in size. Since I’ve become the chief, I think we’ve we’ve grown in size at least 50 officers. About a year and a half ago, we we merged with the Salt Lake City airport PD. So they became one police department with us. But we’ve also seen our community grow. It’s very diverse. And looking at numbers, I think our our population identifies at about seventy seven percent white. The number I think is sixteen percent Hispanic, one point five – I’m going by memory – African-American and about two percent Asian. So, we have diversity and we’ve tried very hard as a police department to make our police department look like the communities we serve. And so I think over the last few years that’s been one of the biggest things we’ve done is try to involve our community in our police department and have our police department look like communities we serve.
Ali Noorani [00:05:07] As I remember, actually the last time I was in Salt Lake and I think we went to breakfast, and then you told me about a program back then where members of the refugee community were being recruited to work in the department. And I just remember leaving that conversation, you know, really appreciative of the steps that you all were taking, you know, even even at a number of years ago.
Mike Brown [00:05:28] Yeah, we have for, probably the last seven, eight years had a very strong explorer program. And that’s what we’re talking about. And let me give you a little definition of who these young adults are. These are individuals within our community. They have to be fourteen years of age to join. They have to complete the eighth grade. We do a background check. They have to have a GPA of 2.0 or better. They have to attend 80 percent of the meetings and we have four hour meetings every Tuesday. That’s a big commitment and they have to meet our grooming standards. So, to give you an idea of what type of commitment that means, our explorers and we’ll go through some numbers here and a little bit. But I’m going back to 2019 because 2020 I like to throw away that’s an anomaly, and we can’t really compare it to anything. But we had meeting hours and this is based off of 50 explorers, our explorers put in 5,606 hours coming to meetings. They went and they do different events with us. They went, they do parades, they do marathons, they do different races, 5ks, they help us with the conference traffic, the LDS conference traffic. They do our bike rodeos and something that’s really interesting – they are the guardians of our fallen memorial up at the Capitol. So the fallen memorial that honors the officers have lost their life in the line of duty, they they go up and sweep and clean and polish the brass and keep that looking good year round. So in hours total, that explorer pack, or that group, the dedicated 8,984 hours to service in our community, that’s about 169.5 Hours per explorer. Now, I’m looking at myself kind of retrospectively, I was an Eagle Scout, I did a lot of community service. But I’m telling you, I didn’t do almost five or six weeks of service in the community. So, when I look at these young individuals, I really have to take my hat off and tip my hand to him and say, well done. These are individuals that want to be with us and they may be looking at a future in law enforcement. So it’s a great recruiting tool. I think one thing is that it is the most diverse by ethnicity, race and gender, it’s the most diverse unit in the department. I’ll take a breath there, maybe ask questions.
Ali Noorani [00:08:07] Yeah so, of the explorers have you started to see over time increased participation from immigrant families?
Mike Brown [00:08:16] We have, but, Ali, we don’t ask. We don’t ask. If you’re a member of our community and they want to come in and serve with us, we don’t ask. We know there are some some some of these young adults that are either LPR or DACA, but we don’t ask. So, just to give you a breakdown, this is the stats from 2021. We have 18 male explorers. We have 18 female explorers. 18 are Hispanic, one Asian, three African-American, 13 Caucasian, one Hawaiian Pacific Islander, and three are multiracial. So, I mean, when you really look at it, there’s not another unit, squad, division, bureau that matches the diversity of this department.
Ali Noorani [00:09:03] That’s great. That’s amazing. When did you see and realize that this was a problem to bring folks who are immigrants but not naturalized U.S. citizens?
Mike Brown [00:09:14] Let me give you an example. We had one individual. He joined our ranks. He joined our Explorer program at the age of 15. He rose through the ranks. He came to all the meetings, he met the grade in school, he was exceptional. You could tell he was a natural born leader. He rose from just an explorer. He became a sergeant. And then he promoted to lieutenant and then he promoted to captain. He was actually leading this group of 50 to 60 explorers. And in talking to our officers that are over the Explorer program, they have told me without any doubt that he was probably the best explorer we’ve ever had. But as he became – as he started getting towards…they age out of twenty one and so a lot of times they’ll start to make application or try to get into our department. He came to some of the officers and said, hey, I don’t have- I don’t have status. I’m not legal here. And so, he was working with an attorney and they made some different suggestions. We tried to help him as well. But it was really sad because this young man, who was leading this group, and let me tell you the type of guy this was. When we did the PT tests, he did one hundred and ten pushups in one minute. This guy was an animal. He ran the mile and a half like the wind. I mean, this is the guy you want to be a cop. But he did not have status. And he came to us kind of very broken hearted and said, you know what? You know what they want me to do? They want me to go back to Mexico for a couple of years and then reapply to come back in. And he said, I’ve been here since I was five. He says, I don’t have any family in Mexico. I don’t know anybody in Mexico. All my family’s here. And so that just wasn’t an option. And it was really it was really heartbreaking to see that as he reached 21, a young man that had dedicated all those years, all that time just wanted to be in law enforcement, sadly, just because where he was born, was told no. Talk about slamming the door on somebody’s dreams
Ali Noorani [00:11:32] And where is he now? Do you keep in touch with him?
Mike Brown [00:11:34] Yeah, I think that is his team does. I think he may be going up to the U, continuing his education to probably go on to be an engineer or a lawyer or something like that.
Ali Noorani [00:11:45] Or a doctor.
Mike Brown [00:11:46] Or a doctor. He’ll probably do much better at organic chemistry. But, you know, to talk about I mean, again, this is just one of several of these cadets that have come through our Explorer program that have wanted to be in law enforcement and to have to tell them after they worked so hard. I’m sorry. You can’t be, just breaks your heart.
Ali Noorani [00:12:12] So what was the- how did the legislation come together in the state house in terms of, you know, being able to expand the the eligibility criteria for officers?
Mike Brown [00:12:21] Well, Ali, you remember, I don’t know, two or three years ago, I’m trying to think where we were in one of the conferences. We were talking about this very thing.
Ali Noorani [00:12:28] Right.
Mike Brown [00:12:29] And I was working with Commissioner Squires at the time, the commissioner over public safety. And we were talking about maybe looking at ways that we could remove those restrictions so that somebody could serve in law enforcement. I mean, it’s really it’s very ironic that you can you can serve in the military. You can you can die for your country, but you can’t be in law enforcement. And so that that conversation is kind of resonated over the last two or three years. And there was a senator here, Senator Main, that was going to run some legislation to remove some of those barriers. And I remember talking with her because I think many times people are confused between LPR status and DACA status. It’s very different. And I was talking to the senator, her team, because they were talking about a young man from another city that would love to be in law enforcement, just like the young man I was talking about. And the question came up, well, are we talking about LPR status or are we talking about DACA? And come to find out, it was a it was a DACA individual. And although the legislation helped the LPR folks, it’s one step away from helping those that are kind of trapped in that DACA world. So, that conversation I know I talked with you and your team. I think you gave us some good legal direction and advice. And I think with the passing of this last legislation, I think it’s a good start. But I would like to see it go one step further, because, I mean, in Salt Lake City, in Utah, there’s about 32,000 individuals there of DACA status, not a huge number. And sometimes people just look at that as a number. But when you start looking at as people, as mothers, fathers, as you look at young explorers that want to serve, they’re, you know, in a police department that really puts a face to the problem.
Ali Noorani [00:14:23] So, for the audience, to understand what the barriers were before the legislation, because I think that I don’t think people realize that, at least before this legislation in Utah, you had the United States citizen to serve in law enforcement. So this legislation address that.
Mike Brown [00:14:40] Right. That and then they wanted the ability to go back and look at somebody in a five year window for a background check, which wouldn’t be a problem for most anybody that’s in our Explorer program. But those two things is what this legislation addressed.
Ali Noorani [00:14:56] And what was it like and the conversations that you or the senator are having with other lawmakers so that they understood, you know, what the problem was and how it could be fixed. And you didn’t get sucked into this, you know, pretty awful immigration debate about, you know, as a person, citizen, not a citizen. Should they be able to serve in law enforcement? How did that how did those conversations go?
Mike Brown [00:15:20] You know, I- the session this time was was virtual, which was kind of different, but when it goes kind of back to what we were just talking about, when you bring an individual and you show them, you say, look, this young man wants so desperately to be a police officer, this is what he’s accomplished in his life this is the service he’s dedicated to this profession. He’s proven himself as a leader, and when you show somebody that those questions about status and DACA, they kind of just they fall away and you go, yeah, that young man deserves a chance. So the conversation is really small when you put a human face to it.
Ali Noorani [00:16:05] Yeah. I also find that for a lot of Americans, they think that they assume that immigrants are threats. And I think this is just such a powerful example of immigrants who are protecting Americans and American values as whether as members of the Armed Services or Salt Lake Police Department.
Mike Brown [00:16:23] Yeah, I mean, you look at I mean, a lot of these these young people have been here since they were two or three years old. They know this is their this is their city. This is their police department. This is their country. They they don’t know anything else. So I think that that argument kind of falls moot when you start talking about that.
Ali Noorani [00:16:44] Yeah. So what would you what do you think that, you know, in Utah, you have two very important senators in terms of Senators Romney and Lee and Senator Romney has talked about the importance of Dreamers. Are you optimistic that there is a state wide support for a solution for DACA recipients and dreamers?
Mike Brown [00:17:04] I think so. I do. I mean, very good senators, both Lee and Romney. And I think they understand the situation and the problem we’re talking about here in Salt Lake and in Utah. And I think it’s kind of nice to be in a state where we start looking at these problems and embrace the community we we live in and those around us and we lead out on their part of our community. Let’s let’s see if we can help them out. So, with those kind of constituents and those senators hearing that message, I think I think we’re in good hands. I think they understand the need and the want, and I think they’re respected. And now this is where we’ve we’ve talked for years. Federal immigration is is really the stumbling block. I think states and cities want want these restrictions lifted. It’s it’s the federal institutions that need to come together and fix this.
Ali Noorani [00:18:03] And I mean, what I find so remarkable about the legislation and the way that the conversation unfolded is that, I mean, look, Utah is not California. It’s certainly not in New York and Utah at the statewide level, is a very conservative state. So I just think it really provides a powerful example to other states, much less to Congress.
Mike Brown [00:18:21] Yeah, yeah. We’re yeah, we are. We’re known as a very conservative state, but a very compassionate state and a state that wants to love our brothers and sisters and see them succeed and fulfill their dreams.
Ali Noorani [00:18:35] And what’s the advice that you would provide to you would offer to, you know, your peers in law enforcement in terms of, you know, engaging the immigrant community, whether it’s as explorers or, you know, advocating for legislative change to change at a state or at a federal level?
Mike Brown [00:18:50] Well, my advice is to embrace immigration. I mean, we’re all talking about I mean, 2020 was a year where police where law enforcement suffered. I think some of the acts that we’ve seen back in Minneapolis almost a year ago painted law enforcement with a very broad brush. None of us really condone that. That wasn’t us. But it did start the conversation. And I think there was some fracturing of trust in our communities. But I know my peers and other chiefs are trying desperately to build that trust back because that’s that’s paramount to the work we do. And so I say the conversation was just to engage with your community. We’re all trying very hard right now to recruit new officers into this profession. When you when you open the door and put applications out, you’ll be surprised how many of the minority population step forward and say, although it’s difficult, I want to do this job. So I don’t ever I would say don’t count anybody out. I would say, you know, embrace and embrace those that want to serve. And let’s see where that takes us.
Ali Noorani [00:20:01] Chief, thank you so much for your time. I really, really appreciate it. And I got to say, you know, we have really enjoyed working with you all and I’ve learned so, so much and are looking forward to to what lies ahead. Thank you.
Mike Brown [00:20:13] Ali. Thank you. Likewise. Take care.
Ali Noorani [00:20:15] You too.
Ali Noorani [00:20:17] Chief Mike Brown is the police chief in Salt Lake City. You can learn more about Chief Brown at our website: ImmigrationForum.org/podcast. If you like what you hear, subscribe to Only in America, wherever you are listening to this episode. Only in America is produced and edited by Katie Lutz, Joanna Taylor, and Becka Wall. Our artwork and graphics are designed by Karla Leyja. I’m Ali Noorani. I will talk to you next week.
Speaker 2 [00:20:45] Support for the National Immigration Forum comes from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement and strengthening international peace and security and from Humanity United. When humanity is united, we can bring a powerful force for human dignity.