1 Salt Lake officer resigned, another suspended after recruit was ‘pranked’ into cutting body

SALT LAKE CITY — Seven Salt Lake police officers who were placed on administrative leave after a new officer was told to cut the blisters off a dead body as a prank will not face criminal charges.

However, one officer resigned because of the incident and another officer was suspended for three days.

“Our investigation found that some of the conduct in this case was unprofessional, discourteous, disrespectful, and offensive,” Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown said in a prepared statement on Friday.

“This behavior does not align with the professionalism and integrity we demand as a police department. I extend my deepest condolences to Mr. Lloyd’s family. Every person we encounter deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Our decorum during death investigations must never again fall short of our core values as it did at times in this case,” he said.

On Aug. 8, Jason Lloyd, 47, was found deceased in a tent near Brooklyn Street and Washington Avenue. His death was not considered suspicious and was later determined by the medical examiner to be accidental.

One of the officers who responded to the scene that day was Dakota Smigel, an officer who had worked a total of 11 shifts to that point and was considered to still be in training. Officer Mark Keep was training Smigel that day. In body camera videos released Friday, Keep appears to be teaching Smigel how to preserve a crime scene when a body is discovered.

“Officers attended to several tasks, including interviewing a witness/complainant, securing the scene with police tape, addressing the potential risk of unknown individuals entering the scene from nearby structures, seeking possible video evidence from adjacent businesses, attempting to identify the decedent,” according to the department’s internal affairs report also released Friday.

While the officers are standing around waiting for a contracting crew to transport Lloyd’s body to the medical examiner’s office, officer Paul Mullenax tells Smigel to go help the crew move the body.

“I feel like you’re pranking me,” Smigel is heard saying to Mullenax and the other officers recorded in body camera video.

“I’m not. Go help,” Mullenax replies.

As Smigel is putting on his gloves, he notices the reactions from the others officers and asks, “Why are you smirking like that?”

In Smigel’s body camera video, he asks the contracting crew as he approaches, “Do you need any help lifting him?” to which the crew laughs and seems taken back by his request. Smigel tells them he thinks he is being “pranked” by the other officers.

Almost simultaneously as Smigel approaches, one of contractors hired to transport the body is on the phone with the medical examiner’s office asking if they can do some “controlled popping” before moving Lloyd, the final report states. Lloyd had large blisters on his right forearm.

The contracting crew tells Smigel in the video that they will “allow” him to help and hand him a box-cutter type of knife.

“Shield your face, and just go ahead and pop all the blisters,” a contractor tells him.

After making several small incisions, Smigel hands the tool back to the contractor and walks back to the other officers who are smiling.

“You guys suck,” he tells them, to which an officer replies, “We had to do that.”

But after word spread about what had happened, several Salt Lake police officers reported the incident to administrators who launched an internal affairs investigation.

“I believe this was a type of hazing delivered by officer Mullenax in an attempt to play a joke on the recruit. However, since officer Mullenax and officer Keep both allowed the recruit to walk over to the deceased body and ask if they needed help, I believe the recruit genuinely believed he was supposed to help them, which is why he willingly accepted the knife from the (contract) worker,” Salt Lake police said in their initial report of the incident.

“With the hazing, the failure to intervene when the recruit was instructed by (the worker) to desecrate a body, the laughing about it afterwards, and instructing the recruit to intentionally leave it out of his report, this is a multitude of violations of our standards of conduct, unprofessional behavior toward co-workers, and conduct unbecoming of an officer. This entire incident has the potential to bring massive discredit to the department.”

The final report from the internal affairs investigation further notes “that there is no such requirement” for an officer to help with the medical examiner’s crew. The investigation concluded that the training officers thought that Smigel was just going to help move the body. The blister cutting, which was approved, was not expected, the report concludes.

The investigation also found that Keep instructed Smigel to not write in his police report about the blister popping. He resigned from the department before the internal affairs investigation was completed.

Mullenax was suspended for three days. He allegedly told internal affairs that he was trying to lighten the mood in a stressful situation when he told Smigel “now you can say you cut someone.”

But in the letter informing him of his suspension without pay, Mullenax’s supervisor states, “Rather than being compassionate toward (Smigel) you made fun of him, laughed at him, and effectively made the situation much worse than it already was. I find that this utter failure to support (him) was reprehensible and inexcusable.

“You had the opportunity to stop (Smigel) from making the cuts, yet you chose not to,” the letter continues. “I also found that your general attitude, demeanor and lack of professionalism at the scene, were well below that expected of a police officer. When you laughed at (Smigel) after cutting the blisters, you were also discourteous and disrespectful to the decedent.”

Officer Michelle Peterson was issued a formal letter of warning.

The investigation was also turned over to the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office, which declined to file criminal charges against any officer “due to insufficient evidence.”

“The available evidence does not support criminal intent of an involved party, particularly not the representative of the medical examiner’s office. The body worn camera footage from trainee, officer Smigel … underlines the lack of criminal intent,” according to District Attorney Sim Gill’s decision.