Utah town now has no police, after chief resigns and others dismissed

Small town in Utah left without full-time police force as fourth chief in recent years fired after only starting job in July

The small town of Mantua in northern Utah stands without a police department after the fourth police chief in recent years was dismissed by the mayor and two other officers resigned.

Local TV station KUTV reported that the officers were under pressure from city officials to write speeding tickets to fund their own positions.

Mayor Michael Johnson told 2News that Chief Michael Castro was let go for personal reasons and not because of his job performance. Deseret News reported that Mr Castro had only been in the job since July.

Mr Castro says he refused to resign and was subsequently fired, ABC4 reported. He told the outlet that he was let go because of a "disagreement" with city officials just two days after receiving the award for Police Chief of the Year for a small town by the Utah Chiefs of Police Association.

Mantua had an estimated population of 963 people in 2019, according to the Census Bureau.

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Mr Castro was one of two full-time officers at the small department, which also had several part-time deputies. Mr Johnson confirmed that two other officers had left their jobs for personal reasons and that no full-time officers are currently employed at the department.

Mantua resident and mayoral hopeful Jennifer Gardner told 2News: "We tend to go through police chiefs quite quickly up here. The officers are changing faces, they are not the consistent problem. I think the problem is somewhere different than just the officers.”

Ms Gardner claimed that the town officers are under pressure to write more citations to boost town funds.

She added: “My view of policing is they are supposed to keep me safe. Their job isn’t just to sit out on the highway and write tickets."

Mr Johnson pushed back in a statement, saying: "I requested that they enforce the law and town ordinances. I also insisted they take enforcement action when they observed a violation. At no time were any of our officers ever disciplined in any manner for not writing citations."

The Box Elder County Sheriff's Office in the northwestern corner of the state has said that they will respond to calls in the town until other arrangements are made.

Mayor Johnson was the police chief until 2017. Former chief Shane Zilles was forced to leave the job after it was found he had been driving under the influence, 2News reported.

Mantua resident Robert Clayton told ABC4 that he's angered by the dismissal of Chief Castro and wants transparency from the mayor.

He said: “We as a town we don’t know what that means as far as our security, our police force.

"I mean it’s a well-known story now that we don’t have police coverage going on. So what does that mean as far as our ability to have patrol, our ability to have responses in emergencies?”

The Independent has reached out to the town of Mantua for comment.