Amid summer violence, lawmakers look to punish gang recruitment

The Salt Lake County District Attorney building in Salt Lake City is pictured on Wednesday, January 3, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

The Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office is pushing for a bill they say will help fight gang violence by making it easier to prosecute adults who recruit minors. 

Officials from the office presented to lawmakers on Monday during a meeting of the Legislative Organized Crime Subcommittee, amid a recent spate of gang violence along the Wasatch Front that killed two teenagers in two separate shootings. 

“To be frank with you, we’re really, really tired of dealing with dead kids getting shot over gang violence,” Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Lt. Dustin Ballard said during the meeting. 

On Aug. 3, 18-year-old Naod Welday was shot and killed at the Mount Olympus Trailhead in Holladay. Police later made two arrests in connection to the shooting, including a 15-year-old boy. 

On Aug. 10, a man and woman were injured, the man critically, after a gang-related shooting in downtown Salt Lake City. Last week, the Salt Lake City Police Department’s Gang Unit arrested two men connected to the shooting. The victim’s names have not been released. 

And on Sunday, an unnamed 14-year-old boy was killed in Millcreek in what Unified Police believe was a gang-related shooting, according to KSL.com, which reported four people, including teens, were seen driving away from the scene. 

Less than 24 hours later, Ballard told lawmakers that the problem is “definitely growing.” 

“We could always use more funding, I could always use more detectives,” he said. 

The sheriff’s office hopes a bill — Organized Crime Amendments — will target what they call “puppet masters,” who recruit teens to carry out violence in an attempt to shield themselves from prosecution. 

It would create a new penalty for adults who recruit or intimidate minors to join a street gang, now a third-degree felony. If that adult uses a weapon during their intimidation that results in injury or emotional harm, they could be charged with a second-degree felony. 

“These adults, they know what they’re doing. They are targeting children because they know the penalties are less and they think that they can get away with not being there, not being the one holding the gun, but having someone else do it in their place. And this language targets those individuals that are standing in the background as the puppet master,” said Deputy Salt Lake County District Attorney Morgan Vedejs.

The bill also defines gang-related predicate offenses, which are underlying crimes that could be components of a larger crime. In this case, the predicate offenses are often unique to and carried out in connection to gangs, including human trafficking, theft, conspiracy-related crimes, homicide or rape.

“If a typical person goes out and commits theft, it will just be theft. But if they go out and commit theft to benefit a gang, then it becomes a predicate offense,” said Shad Larson, associate general counsel for the Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel. 

And the bill requires the documentation of criminal street gangs to make it easier for law enforcement around the state to compile data. 

The bill will likely be heard during a Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Interim Committee meeting this fall, said the committee’s chair, Rep. Ryan Wilcox, R-Ogden.