The year 2020 has been exhausting, due in large part to the Covid pandemic and the political passions of an election. But Summit County Sheriff Justin Martinez says that hopefully, citizens can unite and get back to some kind of normalcy.
During his regular visit to KPCW’s Local View, with host Dave Cushing, Sheriff Martinez talked about Governor Gary Herbert’s recent Health Order on Covid, calling for a state-wide mask mandate and restrictions on gatherings.
The Sheriff said that violations of the order are now a Class B Misdemeanor. He said the good news is that Summit County has been following those mandates already.
“Summit County, really from the very onset of when Corona entered our community, has been very proactive, has taken an approach and a stance of masking. And so what the governor put out state-wide really isn’t, I don’t believe, has any ramifications within Summit County because we’ve been doing it from the beginning. And we do have one of the lowest rates there is in the state. So I’m very proud to be in a community that has taken this seriously, that has made it, quite frankly, easy for me as the Sheriff that—we started the campaign of enforcement through education, and that has really stuck. Now that the governor has issued his order—we’re already in it, we’ve already been doing it.”
On a different topic, Cottonwood Heights resident George William Stahl was arrested in Summit County last week after speeding on I-80 near Coalville at over 130 MPH.
He allegedly said he was going to Missouri to kill a former U.S. Senator, Democrat Claire McCaskill.
Sheriff Martinez said his department wasn’t involved in the arrest. That was Utah Highway Patrol. But he made this appeal, now that voters in the 2020 elections have made their choice.
“The people have risen up and they want a change. And they want a new President, and they want change in our leadership across this country. And yet there are just some people who are gonna resist it to the very end, and are willing to go to these extremes that I just don’t think are necessary. This is the time for our country—we’re all exhausted. We’re all fatigued with Corona and everything else that’s going on in this country. So now’s the time for healing and to come together as a community, as a country. And yet there are still those individuals that feel that homicide is an answer, and it’s definitely not an answer. So this is just an unfortunate time in our country. But I’m hopeful that as we get through this Coronavirus, I mean, get the vaccines and people are feeling more normalized, that we can actually get back to a sense of normalcy.”
Summit County Sheriff Justin Martinez.
