Reports that the Uintah Basin leads the state in sex offenders have lead to inaccurate assumptions. According to Vernal Assistant Police Chief Keith Campbell, society looks at this and calls it an outbreak when in fact this is a result of experts working together and doing a superior job locally. “Our investigators have years of experience and have been able to find and generate more cases,” explains Campbell. “Technology evolves and the skill set evolves and the numbers go up. This is not a matter of the crime happening more frequently here than other places. Rather, people know what signs to look for and will report information that investigators here know what to do with to charge and prosecute the offender.” Campbell also emphasized that local agencies throughout the Basin pride themselves on working these kinds of cases and have worked together on a multidisciplinary task force for decades, long before the multijurisdictional approach became a trend nationally in the last 20 years.
