The wave of protest demonstrations, and sometimes lawlessness, following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman, has gripped the country.
Tom Fisher says it’s an indicator of larger issues. And it’s affected both of Fisher’s roles—as a Summit County Manager and as a Brigadier General in the Utah National Guard.
Fisher told KPCW that Summit County has been working on bias awareness over the past two to three years.
“We have had several trainings across our workforce. We have brought in people and consulted with people to look at our personnel policies. It is something that we’re constantly working on. It is not a line in the sand where we can say we’ve achieved anything in it. It’s a constant process. These are things that are part of us. The best thing that we can do is to be aware of them, and how we apply them to our work place.”
Meanwhile, Fisher also helped to plan the logistics of sending Utah National Guard members to Washington D.C. during the recent protests.
He said they already had some 120-150 personnel on active duty to deal with COVID-related issues.
Some 200 Guardsman supported local law enforcement in Utah. And another 200 were transported to D.C.
Fisher said in general the Guard works for the Governor, unless they are “federalized”, that is, called up by the President.
He added, though, that the Guard’s trip to Washington wasn’t exactly a summons from the White House.
“Although the President is the Commander-in-Chief, the folks that went to Washington were not federalized. They were under what’s called—essentially we have agreements between our National Guards to assist when needed. So it was actually the D.C. National Guard and our National Guard Bureau in Washington that arranged for several states to support the D. C. National Guard.”
Fisher said that, looking back over 30 years, this was an unprecedented situation where the Guard was required to support law enforcement. But on the positive side, it shows that their planning and training works.
“So the fact that we were trained well enough in order to integrate with law enforcement and support their efforts, and do so, so quickly. Moving those folks to Washington D.C. to help there or having people on the ground within two or three hours, helping the Utah Highway Patrol at the Capitol. Our plans worked and that was gratifying.”
Summit County Manager Tom Fisher
