This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Backed by the Utah attorney general, a state senator says he plans to introduce a bill that could decertify officers and possibly disband the police force in Hildale, a town largely populated by members of a polygamous sect.
Most of the residents and six town marshals in the combined border community of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Ariz., are followers of Warren Jeffs, who is serving a life prison sentence in Texas for marrying underage girls.
Utah Sen. Curt Bramble says that could divide the lawmen's loyalties.
"This is a real challenge when you have the police officers themselves who have an allegiance to something other than the Constitution and protecting 'We the people,' " he said.
The bill will likely be similar to one introduced in Arizona that would disband any police department where half of the officers have been decertified, meaning they can no longer be police officers in the state. By contrast, Utah's bill, being drafted now, will likely propose a lengthier evaluation before decertification when it is introduced later this week, said Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.
Colorado City/Hildale town marshals have previously seen their certifications revoked for practicing polygamy, refusing to answer questions about Jeffs and apparently seeking his guidance on police matters, most recently in 2007.
Authorities are increasingly concerned as Jeffs re-asserts his power over the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints from a Texas prison where he is serving a life sentence, asking followers for more obedience to stricter rules and excommunicating more than 100 men from the sect since early last year.
Shurtleff said Hildale town marshals don't always enforce court orders pertaining to the sect's communal property trust, which was taken over by the state seven years ago.
In December, for example, a group of FLDS men took over a schoolhouse legally controlled by a recently excommunicated former member of the sect.
Police responded to the scene, but they didn't remove the men illegally occupying the building, instead calling it a civil matter. The Washington County Sheriff's Office eventually responded and the FLDS men left.
"In many cases, they're disregarding court orders, including the authority of the [court-appointed trust administrator] down there," Shurtleff said.
But Blake Hamilton, an attorney for the city of Hildale, said decertification would go too far.
"They were in a difficult situation," he said. "I would rather have officers turn it over to prosecutors and prosecutors make a determination of whether its a criminal violation or not."
Disbanding the police department would be a "huge disservice to the community," Hamilton said. If the county were to take over policing the community — as proposed by the Arizona bill — it could create delays responding to calls and create distrust with the FLDS residents.
"You're putting these citizens in the position where it's hard to believe they'd say it's for safety concerns," Hamilton said.
The Utah bill, however, wouldn't be as quick to dismantle the existing police department as the Arizona proposal, which disband based on previous decertifications from the past eight years. Utah authorities would suggest putting the community's officers through a new typical decertification investigation by the Peace Officers Standards and Training Academy, Shurtleff said.
"We think we should use the process in place," he said.
— Tribune reporter Robert Gehrke contributed to this story.
Twitter: @lwhitehurst
The Polygamy Blog: http://bit.ly/pKw0ZH