By Eric S. Peterson and Sam Stecklow

The following story was reported by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with the Invisible Institute and Salt Lake City Weekly.

In September 2019, the Logan City Police Department hired Officer Miguel Deras, who had recently left the University of Utah’s campus police. Police officers move from job to job just like anyone else, but Deras was not like anyone else.

He left his previous post without a great reference, considering that a petition had been signed by more than 130,000 individuals—including current and former University of Utah students—demanding he be fired for mishandling sensitive photos of murdered student Lauren McCluskey.

In 2018, McCluskey went to university police to report that someone had stolen explicit photos of her and was using them to try and extort money. A Utah Department of Public Safety review would later find Deras had inappropriately shown the pictures to at least three of his male colleagues without a work-related reason and had told one colleague that he could “look at them whenever he wants.”

After the state’s investigation was completed in 2020, Deras was promptly fired by Logan City.

“Our continuing efforts to hold sacred the public’s trust and our duty to serve and protect has resulted in today’s decision,” the department’s press release stated.

Deras’ move from one department to another was caught by the megawatt glare of public scrutiny surrounding the university’s inept response to the McCluskey case. The botched handling of that case culminated in her murder by Melvin Rowland, a man she briefly dated and who had also tried to extort her with the photos.

But police screwups are not always wrapped up in such high-profile cases. Some officers have a knack for bouncing from one department to the next with little awareness from the public—or sometimes their own departments—about the true nature of their past work history.

This week, a new data tool showing police employment history launches in Utah. The data tool, part of a national reporting project focusing on state-level police certification and employment data, is being launched in Utah after a successful public records appeal by the Utah Investigative Journalism Project. Utah is one of 17 states where data about police employment history is now available through the tool.

The tool was created by the Chicago-based nonprofit journalism organization Invisible Institute and was developed with data collected by a national coalition of reporters and others convened by Big Local News. It is intended to help journalists, researchers, attorneys and the public access data about the professional work history of officers in the state.

The data can be used to track potential examples of what’s known as “wandering cops”: officers who commit misconduct at one department, are fired or leave under other circumstances, and are able to find work at another agency, simply because they maintain their police certifications.

The public “should have the right to investigate [if] bad cops are going from agency to agency,” said former longtime Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank. “That’s where there should be more public disclosure on those things, as opposed to hiding it away. There needs to be accountability for why individual agencies are hiring these people.”

Certification and employment history data have been used by journalists in California to identify officers with criminal convictions who are still employed in law enforcement; in Georgia to show that officers with checkered histories were being hired by school districts; in Illinois to show how officers who had committed controversial shootings cycled through the suburban departments outside of Chicago; and in Washington State to show weaknesses in the state oversight system.

In 2020, law professors Ben Grunwald and John Rappaport published research on the problem of “wandering officers” in Florida and found they were most likely to be fired for a “moral character violation.” Those authors concluded that “wandering officers may pose serious risks, given how difficult it is to fire a police officer.”

Now, the data for Utah can be accessed online at national.cpdp.co.

“… I can get in anywhere”

Most police officers in Utah find themselves working at a small number of departments throughout their career. Some move around for better jobs and opportunities. But some also move far and wide across the state, because they have to.

Take former Lehi police officer Wade Butterfield, for example, who was charged in 1999 for criminal trespass when he broke into a woman’s home and woke her up while sitting at the edge of her bed. The woman said that when she asked him how he got in he responded: “I’m a cop. They teach us how to do that. I can get in anywhere.”

Butterfield was charged with criminal trespass, later knocked down from a misdemeanor to an infraction. As a sworn officer, though, the conduct was serious enough that his certification was suspended by Utah’s Peace Officer Standards and Training Council. POST, as the agency is commonly known, trains all officers in the state and keeps track of where officers work and what their certification status is.

While POST keeps tabs on where officers end up working, it’s not information they share widely.

Butterfield, as it turns out, would wind up as police chief of Myton, a small town in Duchesne County. There he would be charged with stalking, after a woman alleged that he drove her around in his patrol car for two hours talking about sex.

That woman testified that he told her “My car is like Vegas. What happens here, stays here.” While Butterfield was acquitted of that charge in 2015, even his own attorney admitted his conduct was immoral and unprofessional, just not a crime.

Other officers have also made quiet exits from one department to another following controversy. Kevin Salmon was one of two West Valley City officers involved in the 2012 shooting death of 21-year-old Danielle Willard.

Salmon and his partner Shaun Cowley suspected Willard of buying drugs and opened fire on her when she backed her car out of a parking spot.

Cowley later said he feared she was trying to run him over. The shooting was ruled unjustified by the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s office. It was determined that one of Salmon’s shots grazed her chin but was not the fatal bullet.

While the recently-released POST records show that Cowley did not land a new position in Utah, Salmon went on to work for police departments in Woods Cross, then Cottonwood Heights and, more recently, Riverton.

Records show his status was “separated” from Riverton Police Department on March 1, 2024. An inquiry to the department indicated that Salmon had been investigated as part of a use-of-force investigation but had been cleared of wrongdoing.

The incident came to the attention of Riverton by body camera footage from a Herriman officer with concerns that Salmon may have held down a burglary suspect by placing his knee on the man’s neck. Salmon and other Riverton officers were assisting Herriman officers in the arrest. Riverton reviewed the footage and determined that Salmon had his knee on the suspect’s upper back and not on his neck. Other Riverton officers interviewed said the force was appropriate and was not likely on the neck of the suspect, although the suspect at one point said: “Hey you can let go of the neck, man.”

While Salmon was cleared, the report noted that “Salmon did not have his body camera on during this event, and it was not detailed why in the report.” Salmon later said the battery had died on the camera.

A request for comment to Salmon was passed to his attorney Bret Rawson. Rawson said Salmon would not comment on the incident but noted that Salmon retired in good standing and now is a business owner. Rawson noted Salmon served with honor and was injured multiple times on the job.

“He was a leader among his peers; he acted always with integrity and professionalism,” Rawson said of Salmon. “The communities he served owe him a debt of gratitude.”

By the numbers

Obtaining the records themselves was no easy task. Beginning in January 2023, The Utah Investigative Journalism Project sought POST’s database of officer certifications showing where they worked and reasons for separations from their employers. POST denied the request and the dispute went to the State Records Committee.

Attorney David Reymann represented The Utah Investigative Journalism Project at the hearing and talked about the lack of transparency by POST.

“This agency tracks nearly 10,000 police officers in a database, and they have refused to release any information,” Reymann said. “Even basic stuff like names and whether they’ve been certified or not. That is stunning and it should stun this committee.”

At the hearing, POST representatives argued against release of the documents based on a number of considerations. David Mooers-Putzer, the attorney representing POST, argued officer safety was the number one consideration—especially for undercover officers who could potentially be exposed if their names were released publicly.

“It’s not really within POST’s ability to determine who is undercover or who may become undercover in the near future,” Mooers-Putzer said.

He noted that officers who go undercover select pseudonyms that are similar to their real name, so even the release of the officer’s real name could link them to their cover identity.

POST then argued it wasn’t its responsibility to find out which officers were undercover, so the request would have to be made to individual law enforcement agencies.

But the committee disagreed and decided that it was POST’s burden to release the information, with appropriate redactions. It was not until the spring of this year POST was able to remove names of undercover officers and provide the information.

The raw numbers tell their own story about policing in Utah. The data that was eventually released shows the certification records for more than 28,000 officers, including 10,000 active officers from records going back to 2008.

The records have simple labels for types of “status” for the officers, such as those who resigned, were terminated and considered separated, which can include suspensions.

The data shows that there were only 844 terminations out of those 28,000 officers. POST said that the number may be distorted as it may include officers who were certified but never actually got employment in Utah. The document also shows 7,664 officers who resigned. POST acknowledges it is possible that some officers were allowed to resign instead of being terminated.

Burbank, who is now a consultant with the Center for Policing Equity, said when he was chief of police in Salt Lake City, he fired roughly 10 officers each year. He also said he would let officers resign instead of being terminated, but let them know he would document why they were resigning.

“If you resign and go work at Walmart or wherever, you can tell them ‘I resigned from the police department’ and that is an honest assessment,” Burbank said. But he also warned that he would provide information about the resignation if a new employer, including a new police agency, asked for it.

“I am amazed at how many police agencies never called to find out why officers resigned,” he said.

“Constitutional significance”

The new data, while not providing specific details about discipline an officer faced, can still provide important clues. Some details show terminations or even make note of officers resigning when an investigation was requested by their department.

The tool also is useful because a 2019 state audit found examples of agencies not reporting instances of misconduct to POST that they were required to under the law.

Emma Penrod is President of the Utah Headliners Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. She sees a clear benefit for reporters looking into allegations of police misconduct.

“Given the ever-increasing demands on their time, journalists don’t often have time to check into details outside their immediate area of coverage,” Penrod said. “This tool will allow journalists to quickly reference information from regions they may not cover on a daily basis, which will result in more thorough and accurate news for readers and viewers.”

It’s not only journalists who are often pressed for time. Defense attorneys, who juggle case loads of sometimes hundreds of clients, can also benefit from a reference on the police officers who may have arrested or investigated their clients.

David Ferguson is the Director of the Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and said understanding an officer’s background is vitally important to a healthy criminal justice system.

“The reasons for termination can have constitutional significance to a criminal defendant and many cases depend on the credibility of the officer’s testimony about what the officer observed and their impressions and assessments,” Ferguson said. “A lot of things show up in bodycam [footage] but a lot of things don’t.”

Ferguson said that in his career of defending more than 1,000 criminal defendants and having dealt with hundreds of officers, never once did the prosecution disclose information about an officer’s past employment or discipline histories that might have resulted in their firing from a previous job. It’s a challenge for these lawyers who lack time and resources to investigate and find out if an officer was fired for falsifying a report or resigned under suspicion because of use of force.

The ironic thing, he said, is that under the law the prosecution has to provide this information.

“Prosecutors don’t inquire about an officer’s employment and past employment and they rely entirely on the officer to self-report,” Ferguson said. “If the officer doesn’t want to reveal that their credibility might be challengeable because of the way they left a past job, it doesn’t get found out. That’s just the reality.”

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