Heber City couple Michele and T.C. Thomas’ 9-year-old son, who has Down syndrome, likes to explore, even if he doesn’t have an adult with him.

“One day, I was in the bathroom, and my husband was gone, and my front door camera went off, and it was him. He was walking straight out the front door. He had figured out the childproof door handle and lock and just went on his way,” Michele said. “There’s so much to see, so many people to meet.”

Wandering is common among those with certain developmental disabilities, such as Down syndrome and autism spectrum disorder, but it also affects people with other conditions like Alzheimer’s disease. It refers to situations where someone leaves a safe area or a responsible caregiver, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Reuniting the individual with caregivers can be complicated when the individual has communication differences or is nonverbal.

Because of risks like drowning and traffic injury, it’s important for law enforcement to “act fast” in such situations, as Michele put it. That’s why T.C., formerly a Heber City Police Department officer, created a vulnerable persons form about eight years ago. 

The voluntary form allows residents to provide information about themself or a loved one in the case they go missing or have an interaction with law enforcement. It advises police on how best to communicate and interact with the individual and provides emergency contacts and photos of the person.

T.C.’s plans to expand the program “fizzled out” when he left the Police Department last July, according to officer Travis Price. So, Price took up the mantle himself, launching the new Project Safeguard last week.

Project Safeguard published the vulnerable persons form online, which includes sections about an individual’s triggers, calming techniques, likes and dislikes. 

Likes have ranged from soothing music to the flashing lights of police cars, Price explained. Meanwhile, one person’s dislike was “males.”

“In that instance, we may rely on our female officers or deputies or first responders to have a key role in that. Maybe we want them to be the ones to initiate the conversation with the individual once we find them or calm them down,” Price said.

The Police Department is also distributing Project Safeguard stickers at the police station that can be placed on car or home windows to alert officers that a vulnerable person may be present.

The Wasatch County Sheriff’s Office is working on launching a similar Red Dot program, according to public information officer Leo Lucey. Residents can put stickers on their cars to indicate that someone in the vehicle may have special medical needs and provide a letter detailing those needs to law enforcement if pulled over. 

The Police Department can also share information from Project Safeguard with the Sheriff’s Office, Price said.

The goal of Project Safeguard is for vulnerable persons to have “win-win” interactions with law enforcement, according to Cheryl Smith, the former president of the Autism Council of Utah. 

She said her son, who is 28 and autistic, “does a lot of things that look sketchy” but are actually driven by his special interests.

For example, he may look into someone’s car window if he spots some VHS tapes, which he loves to collect. But because he is nonverbal, he would be unable to communicate what he was doing if he were to have a run-in with law enforcement. 

“One of your fears as a parent is that your kid’s going to have an interaction with officers, and it’s going to go wrong,” Smith said. 

That’s exactly what happened to Golda Barton in 2020 when she called 911 for assistance amid her 13-year-old son Linden Cameron’s meltdown. Salt Lake City Police arrived on the scene, and when Cameron, unarmed, ran from the house, officer Matthew Farillas shot him six times, injuring him. The family sued the city and was awarded $3 million in 2022.

Cameron’s shooting by police was part of what inspired Price to launch Project Safeguard.

“It’s very unfortunate what Cameron and his family had to go through. However, we can educate our officers when they see or hear, ‘Hey, this individual may be on the spectrum,’ to take a step back and realize … their boundaries may be different from other individuals and communication,” he said.

The incident also inspired legislation requiring Utah law enforcement training and intervention responses for mental illnesses, autism spectrum disorder and other neurological and developmental disorders at least once every three years. 

In 2024, Crisis Intervention Team Utah trained the Police Department and Sheriff’s Office. The 40-hour program provides education about how to recognize symptoms of various mental illnesses and disorders and walks officers through scenarios, explained Executive Director Dr. Todd Soutor. 

But he said the most valuable part of the training is connecting police officers with community officers who have “lived experience” and having them share their stories.

“Empathy is such an important component of responding in an informed and educated manner,” Soutor said.

The Autism Council of Utah also provides law enforcement training, but its interactions with local law enforcement agencies have been limited to providing autism sensory bags, free of charge, to the Police Department, Sheriff’s Office and Wasatch Fire District. The bags include fidget toys, noise-canceling headphones and Picture Exchange Communication System sheets, which nonverbal individuals can use to communicate by pointing at pictures or writing.

“We’ve had successes with that, where people have been so anxious they have actually gone nonverbal and were able to write out where they came from, so the officers could get them back home safely,” Smith said. 

For example, body cam footage recently released by the Salt Lake City Police Department shows officers using a sensory bag to de-escalate an incident with an autistic child last month.

Soutor said Utah law enforcement’s treatment of vulnerable persons is “moving in a positive direction.” Project Safeguard, he said, is just one example of that. 

To sign up for Project Safeguard, visit tinyurl.com/mrbccxnh. Summit County law enforcement agencies have a similar program. Learn more at tinyurl.com/rs96rb2b.

The post Heber City Police Department launches Project Safeguard for vulnerable people appeared first on Park Record.

The Lehi Police Department arrested a former Heber Valley Hospital manager on Monday for theft and burglary, one month before the man is scheduled to appear in court for similar charges he pleaded guilty to in Fourth District Court over the summer. 

Jason Brauner, 47, had not been formally charged in Utah County as of Thursday afternoon. However, a judge ordered Brauner to be held without bail on Tuesday. The affidavit of probable cause alleged Brauner stole approximately $25,000 worth of medical supplies and devices, including skin grafts and medical tools, from Holy Cross Hospital – Mountain Point in Lehi. 

Brauner previously worked at the Heber Valley Hospital. In 2023, he was arrested and charged with using his access badge to steal from the hospital and other employees. He was convicted in August.

Now, Lehi police are accusing Brauner of something similar.

In the most recent case, surveillance footage allegedly showed a man later identified as Brauner wearing hospital scrubs and a surgical mask as he entered the hospital at 12:30 a.m. on Nov. 25. The footage shows Brauner leaving the hospital about 10 minutes later, carrying several items under his arms, according to the affidavit.

Lehi police were dispatched to the hospital the same day. Hospital staff initially estimated that around $10,000 worth of equipment was taken from the emergency room, but discovered it was closer to $25,000 after a full inventory, including more than $13,000 in bone grafts.

Last week, officers said they learned that Brauner allegedly entered the hospital during overnight hours “without authorization, accessed restricted areas, and removed hospital property” between Nov. 11 and Nov. 26. Surveillance footage shows Brauner entering through unsecured dock doors and moving through restricted materials and supply areas, including the day of the reported burglary. 

A security officer approached Brauner days earlier after observing a suspicious parked car. He briefly displayed a badge, identified himself by a different name and then left in a vehicle, according to the affidavit.

Police said they later learned that multiple secured doors, “including core access and operating room access doors, had been intentionally taped open” allowing unauthorized access into the hospital. However, the affidavit says it’s unclear if Brauner taped the doors or if hospital staff did.

Brauner was identified after information from hospital staff, who recognized him as a former housekeeper. Further investigation showed Brauner had been involved in similar thefts at hospitals, including West Jordan in November, and California in July, where he was arrested for stealing approximately $100,000 worth of medical supplies. 

The affidavit said Brauner is currently on probation in California for that offence as well as the one in Heber City.

“Brauner’s prior employment in hospital settings explains his possession of hospital-style scrubs and an ID badge and demonstrates his familiarity with hospital layouts, access points, and supply storage areas,” court documents state. “In prior cases involving Brauner, stolen medical supplies were recovered from both his vehicle and his residence, establishing a pattern of transporting and storing stolen hospital property.”

Police found handwritten medical inventory sheets as well as contact information for medical providers interested in purchasing bone grafts during a subsequent search of Brauner’s Salt Lake City home. Brauner’s wife confirmed to police that he had been selling bone and skin grafts and disposable medical supplies to companies around the country, the affidavit said.

Brauner was the environmental services manager for Heber Valley Hospital when he was arrested on similar charges in May 2023.

A hospital employee notified the Heber City Police Department in April that cash and a credit card had been stolen from her staff locker, according to a police booking affidavit. That night, the employee received a credit card alert notifying her that the card had been used at a store in Sandy.

A second employee told the investigating officer a similar story — that items, including a credit card, had been stolen from his locker in the men’s locker room. Both the break room and the men’s locker room required badge identification to enter.

Security footage from a store in Cottonwood Heights showed a man and a woman each using one of the stolen credit cards. The pair left the store in what appeared to be the same vehicle. 

In May, an employee of the hospital’s Ear, Nose & Throat Center found that medical equipment worth approximately $26,000 had been stolen. The employee noticed three scopes were missing from a storage closet, and cupboards and drawers were left open in the neighboring exam room. There were no signs of forced entry.

Investigators presented still frames of the security footage to the Heber Valley Hospital, which identified the man as Brauner. Administrators said Brauner was on paternity leave and had made statements about possibly visiting California. 

Heber police also learned that Brauner had keys and badge access to all areas of the hospital through his position. Video surveillance also showed Brauner removing items from the Ear, Nose & Throat Center around the time of the theft.

Brauner later admitted that “he had items from the center and had possibly stored them inside his residence,” according to the affidavit. Brauner was booked into the Wasatch County Jail on theft in a value exceeding $5,000, a second-degree felony.

Brauner was found guilty in Fourth District Court on Aug. 13 on seven charges, including theft in the amount between $1,500 and $4,999 from the Ear, Nose & Throat Center on May 6, 2023. 

A restitution hearing in the case was scheduled for Jan. 15, 2026. Wasatch County prosecutors requested that Brauner pay complete restitution to the Ear, Nose & Throat Center for $14,716.50. During the restitution hearing, a judge will determine whether Brauner must pay that amount.

The post Former Heber Valley Hospital manager arrested for medical supplies theft, again appeared first on Park Record.

Heber City Police Chief Parker Sever appeared before the City Council in late October and informed them an officer had shape-shifted into a frog.

At least, that’s what he heard from his son-in-law, who works for the West Jordan Police Department. That department had recently implemented artificial intelligence software that generates police reports using body camera footage. The details aren’t always 100% accurate — which is why officers review them.

“I read the report, and I’m like, ‘Man, this really looks like an officer wrote it,’” Sever recalled. “But when it got to one part, it said, ‘And then the officer turned into a frog, and a magic book appeared and began granting wishes.’ … It was because they had, like, ‘Harry Potter’ on in the background. So it picked up the noise from the TV and added it to the report.”

The Heber City Police Department is test piloting similar software. 

The candidates are Code Four, a startup launched by two 19-year-old MIT dropouts earlier this year, and law enforcement technology juggernaut Axon’s Draft One. Select weekday officers have access to Draft One, while weekend officers use Code Four. 

The two-month free trial periods for these programs expire in January.

The selling point of an AI software that creates police reports is the time savings. 

Axon and Code Four cite similar statistics that police officers spend up to 40% of their time writing police reports.

 “I think most of the public wants our officers out on the street, not in the office,” Sever said.

That ‘brand new car’

Josh Weishar, a Police Department sergeant who had exclusively used Draft One, testified to the time savings on Nov. 10, about a week into the pilot program.

Weishar thought the AI-generated police reports were typically more detailed than what he would have written.

“An officer’s going to go with the basic information,” he said. “I think you’ll get more info, or at least, definitely more detailed info, than you would from just typing it out on your own because you’re just going to remember the key facts instead of all the detail that comes from that AI’s portion.”

That was one of the reasons the software appealed to Heber City Police — an officer might not be as detailed if they’re “down 10 reports,” Sever said, but AI can always include the same level of detail.

Both Draft One and Code Four allow the user to customize the level of detail the AI software includes in the report, from basic synopses to in-depth play-by-plays, and can generate reports from interactions in English and Spanish.

The major difference between the software is that Draft One creates a report based on bodycam audio, while Code Four uses bodycam audio and video.

End-of-shift reports, which provide an overview of incidents over an entire shift, will continue to be written exclusively by humans.

“Most of our officers are kind of awestruck with (Draft One) because it’s such a new, innovative thing for us,” Weishar said. “It’s like that brand new car that’s got all the features to it. For us, it’s crazy that you can just press a button and it’ll tell you everything about the case that you were on and give you a pretty decent police report to edit.”

How Draft One works

In a demonstration of Draft One, Weishar showed that the draft report is littered with prompts that ask the officer to provide additional detail about certain elements, like what a suspect looked like or the state of the crime scene. The prompts, which have to be deleted or edited to continue, are intended to force the officer to review the report with a fine-tooth comb. 

Once they’ve completed their edits and approved the report, the officer copies and pastes the report into the Police Department’s database and submits it as they would any other police report.

The original report generated by Draft One is not retained. However, the software creates an “unalterable digital audit trail” that captures who used the tool, when they used it and what evidence was involved, according to Axon’s website.

The report ends with a disclosure that is turned on by default: “I acknowledge this report was generated using Draft One by Axon. I further acknowledge that I have reviewed the report in detail, made any necessary edits, and believe it to be an accurate representation of my recollection of the reported events. If needed, I am willing to testify to the accuracy of this report.”

The disclosure can be customized or turned off.

Comparison shopping

If the Police Department chooses to continue with Draft One, it would cost about $30,000 of taxpayer dollars per year, according to Sever. 

Code Four co-founder George Cheng was critical of Axon because of additional add-ons, such as extra video storage and processing. He estimated it costs up to $400 per officer per month because of these add-ons. Code Four is significantly cheaper at $30 per officer per month. Sever estimated it would cost Heber City between $6,000 and $8,000 annually. 

Cheng visited the Taylorsville and Heber City police departments before Thanksgiving to demonstrate how the software works. He’s made similar house calls at the Spanish Fork, South Jordan, Kaysville and Draper police departments.

Sever said he’s only able to authorize expenditures up to a certain amount without Heber City Council approval. Purchasing Draft One for around $30,000 per year would require such permission. Buying Code Four at around $6,000 to $8,000 per year would not.

As of December, Heber City Police were leaning toward Code Four because of its lower cost and ability to write more comprehensive reports.

Another case

The Heber City Police Department isn’t the only law enforcement agency in the Wasatch Back test-piloting AI software.

The Summit County Sheriff’s Office recently completed a 90-day pilot program of Draft One among six patrol deputies. The Park City Police Department and Wasatch County Sheriff’s Office have not implemented any AI software practices.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Skyler Talbot said his outlook on AI in policing is a balance of caution and optimism.

“It’s important that we recognize the capabilities of AI and the strong potential to increase operational efficiency,” he said. “I think it’s important that we stay on the cutting edge of that as it develops. But with that … I don’t want to say we should be skeptical, but we definitely need to be cautious.”

Talbot said Draft One was not used to draft reports for “major incidents or any incident that might result in felony level charges” during the pilot program.

On Nov. 25, Talbot informed The Park Record that the Summit County Sheriff’s Office had chosen not to continue with Draft One past the free trial.

He explained that Draft One has an administrative setting that forces the AI software to insert obvious errors into every report. 

“What that did is prompted and really forced the deputy to go through, read the report, check it for accuracy and make those corrections before it would allow them to continue,” Talbot said. Essentially, the time savings weren’t as impressive.

Having that setting on was a necessity if the Summit County Sheriff’s Office were to implement Draft One to ensure deputies were reading the draft report carefully and checking it for accuracy before submitting it, Talbot explained. 

Meanwhile, the Heber City Police Department does not have this setting turned on. Sever said he was not aware of the setting and would have to look into its value.

Talbot said it wasn’t “fiscally responsible” for the Summit County Sheriff’s Office to use taxpayer funding on the program, though he clarified that the stance could change in a matter of years or months as the field evolves.

“Again, this is useful. This is great technology for our department size, for our call volume,” he said. “It just makes more sense, at this point anyway, just to do things the way we were doing them before.”

Ethical concerns

Not all are optimistic about AI-drafted police reports. 

David Ferguson, executive director of the Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, detailed some of the potential pitfalls of such AI software. He said that police reports are vital to defense attorneys because they can reveal whether the writer has any biases. 

But because generative AI can “hallucinate,” getting details wrong or making them up entirely, it would be “unethical” for a defense attorney to take an AI-drafted police report at face value, leading them to review the bodycam footage to verify basic details in more and more cases, Ferguson said. That could increase workload for defense attorneys, particularly overworked public defenders. 

Prosecutors, on the other hand, typically rely on the evidence given to them by the police, including police reports.

A report generated by an AI software also has the potential to modify an officer’s memories of an incident. If an officer who used generative AI to draft a report testified in court, they could end up testifying based on the AI’s observations, not their own.

“When we compare notes, we tend to pull another person’s observations into our own memory,” Ferguson explained. The same could be said for the observations of an AI software.

“If the full narrative is whatever the body camera has picked up, that becomes the proposed truth of whatever happened. … At some point, why do we have officers testify at all?” Ferguson said. “It’s deeply offensive, in some sense, to think about a system in which humans are being prosecuted by cameras and whatever a software determines is relevant from what the camera picks up.”

This can be especially problematic if the transcription struggles to understand an accent or the meaning of slang terms. Further problems could emerge with AI’s video software. Ferguson explained that AI can have “difficulty with interpreting and understanding faces of minorities,” and that AI-attributed observations about a person’s actions, body language, behavior and facial expressions could be misunderstood — especially among minority communities. 

According to Axon, studies for racial bias in Draft One “could not detect a statistically significant difference in Completeness, Consistency or Word Choice Severity between races.” The studies evaluated whether AI-generated transcripts differed depending on race.

In April 2024, the company said a more detailed report about the studies would be released. However, The Park Record was unable to find additional information about the racial bias studies.

Lack of transparency was another of Ferguson’s concerns, since private corporations aren’t subject to the same transparency laws, like the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act, as a government agency is. That could make it difficult for defense attorneys or the public to dig into the software to better understand how it works.

He was also skeptical that AI-drafted police reports would be properly reviewed by officers before they hit approval. 

“The problem isn’t an officer who’s able to condense an hour’s worth of work into 10 minutes. The problem is the officer who says, ‘I can do even better. I can condense this into 30 seconds.’ … You have to have your head in the sand to think that that’s not going to become normal among some officers, and even culturally accepted in some departments,” Ferguson said.

But Sever believes any faulty reports will be caught in the administrative process.

“Once (a police officer) signs off on (a police report), it goes to a supervisor. That supervisor is required to look at that report for completeness and accuracy, and then sign off on it,” he explained. “Then our records department gets the report, … and lots of times, they’re the ones that also kick back reports for something that they see.”

An officer who continually failed to review AI-drafted reports before submitting them would be disciplined and potentially terminated.

Looking forward

Sever said the only reason the department may not immediately implement one of these programs is if it doesn’t fit into the current budget cycle. 

“An officer in the station does not affect slowing people down on the road. They’re not available to respond to a call in a timely manner,” Sever said. “When we can get them out of the station, on the road, is when the public is going to see them, and that’s when it changes people’s behaviors for the better.”

Feedback from officers seems to have been positive as well.

“One of my sergeants, he’s not a big tech guy, but he’s super excited about this,” Sever said. “He goes, ‘I came back to the station. This report would have taken me an hour, and it took me eight minutes.’”

The post Heber City Police Department test-pilots AI software appeared first on Park Record.

The Summit County Library and Home Depot put on a truck petting zoo in Home Depot’s parking lot Saturday, July 1, 2017, thanks to their summertime partnership. The event gave kids an opportunity to meet policemen and firemen, tour the trucks as well as complete a crafting project. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

Link to the full gallery here: https://parkrecordphoto.smugmug.com/PHOTOS-Truck-Petting-Zoo/

The post PHOTOS: Truck Petting Zoo appeared first on Park Record.

Local children and their parents were able to spend up to $150 Saturday morning, Dec. 3, 2016, as they shopped around Walmart in Kimball Junction with member of the Park City and Summit County police departments. All were treated to a full breakfast and a visit from Santa. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

The post PHOTOS: Shop With A Cop appeared first on Park Record.

The Elks First Responders awards gave credit to members of the Park City Police Department, Fire District and more for being outstanding service-members to the community Sunday evening, August 21, 2016. The event was held at Rotary Park and featured a BBQ for dinner. (Photos by Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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