Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd is up against what could best be described as an impossible situation. There are too few jail, mental health, and shelter beds to accommodate Salt Lake City’s ever-growing homeless community.
In a recent Utah Homeless Services Board meeting, packed with state and local leaders, Redd presented a series of color-coded heat maps. These maps showed something many downtown residents already knew: when you clear a homeless encampment from one area, it just pops up somewhere else.
The heat maps focused on the Jordan River Trail, where public safety issues prompted officers to intervene. Calls for service dropped in that area after enforcement, but new yellow and red hotspots appeared in Liberty Park, Ballpark, and North Temple. Enforcement brought temporary relief to one neighborhood but displaced the problem to others…