While residents of Park City and Summit County are going through some disruptive and nervous times, County Sheriff Justin Martinez says the primary purpose of his department is to keep the community safe, as always.
In the wake of a second Emergency Health Order from the county, the Sheriff asked citizens not to buy into the rumours or the hype.
Talking to Randy Barton on the Local View, Sheriff Martinez said his deputies are responding to emergencies, and making their presence known in a community slammed by the COVID-19 shutdown.
He’s made some changes, such as taking officers off graveyard shifts, since the local night life has been shuttered, and shifting those personnel to watch businesses or circulate around grocery stores.
He said there’s a lot of misinformation and misunderstandings about what his department will do.
“I’ve heard everything—that the Sheriff’s Office is going to be setting up checkpoints, that we’re gonna be going house to house, that this is a lockdown, you’re not allowed to leave. And I wanted to really take the opportunity to dispel a lot of these rumours. Because these are actually false. People can leave their house. We encourage people to leave, go for a drive, go for a hike, go out and walk your dog, be part of this community. Look, we’re not setting up checkpoints. We’re not pulling people over and asking, “What is your essential reason for being out and about?” People still need to move about in this community. You can still go to the grocery stores. You can still order food and pick it up curbside.”
He said they’re also asking non-residents of the county to leave, in order not to burden the local medical infrastructure.
“We don’t want people from the valley coming up to Summit County and recreating. If they have an accident—hiking, biking, whatever they may have—we have a very small medical service up here in Summit County. And we don’t need other people to clog that medical system up. And so that’s part of this whole purpose, is to keep people out, but still allow those residents, the residents of Summit County to participate in our open lands, our trail system. We just don’t want people from outside to come in and clog our already-small medical system up here.”
And he reminded citizens to maintain social distancing.
“I’m not gonna go around as the Sheriff like a nun with a six-foot ruler, and making sure that people are staying the proper distance away. We expect people to take this seriously, to be adults about it, and as parents to show kids the good responsibility of social distancing in this crisis.”
Locals are facing the second Emergency Health Order in as many weeks. But the Sheriff told them to keep it in context.
“This is not a far departure from what the first order was. The first order went out. It created some anxiety and we got through that. This is not a far departure from that. We’re just taking it a step further. The grocery stores are still open. The state of Utah just put out, for a lot of Summit County residents, the liquor stores will remain open. I mean, things are good, things could be a lot worse.”
Summit County Sheriff Justin Martinez.
