Let us pause to celebrate the moment. Rosie Rivera this week became the first woman, and the first Latina, to be sheriff of Utah’s largest county.
Rivera, a 24-year veteran who rose to become chief of the Unified Police Department’s Riverton division, took the next step up when county Democrats chose her to fill the remaining term of former Sheriff Jim Winder, who left to become Moab police chief.
In these acutely challenging times for law enforcement, particularly when it comes to their interactions with people of color, Rivera’s ascent is an instantly visible sign for Utah’s growing Latino population that the people on both sides of the badge are not that different.
And there’s no question Rivera is ready for this. She has protected the public as a patrol officer and worked gang investigations and community policing assignments. In addition to UPD and the sheriff’s office, she also worked on Weber State’s and Taylorsville’s forces.
OK. Celebration’s over. Now Chief Rivera becomes Sheriff Rivera, and, as the last person to hold the job will tell her, there won’t be time to bask in any glows. Winder, who had been sheriff for more than a decade, left in the middle of his term. By his own admission, he couldn’t get out fast enough after getting a gut-full of the political infighting and the unwillingness to fund enough jail beds. “The idea of taking a large stone and rolling it perpetually uphill, after a while, it will wear on you,” Winder said as he was taking the Moab Police Chief job.
Welcome to the beat, Sheriff Rivera. Here’s your large stone.
The sheriff job is a smorgasbord. Rivera will be the CEO of the Unified Police Department, which provides police protection for six cities and the unincorporated areas, including the canyons. She also will be in charge of 1,100 people in the Sheriff’s office, most of whom work in the county’s jail system. The office also manages bailiffs for the courts, security at county facilities and the search and rescue program, among other things.
It is the jail that has been at the center of the storm. The needs of a growing county have competed with justice-reform efforts to reduce the number of incarcerated people. As a result, police around the valley have complained about a revolving door. They bring suspects in, only to see them back out on the street a short time later.
One solution in recent years has been to ship inmates to other counties, but that has brought forth its own set of problems. The “Operation Rio Grande” effort required a last-minute scramble to make sure that inmates who were getting drug and alcohol treatment could continue, which is an absolute necessity. A deal with Weber and Davis counties was crucial.
That sort of cooperative management must continue. For Rivera to succeed, she’ll have to be much more than the new face of modern policing in the county. She’ll also have to be its head and its heart. She is up to it.