“Stop shielding the AFPD.” Ten weeks of American Fork’s own record: the people who tried the city’s instruments keep reporting them broken, and the asks now converge on an audit the city does not control.
PRIMARY SOURCEThe June 9 city council meeting, on the city’s own channel; the August 11 tax hearing as this site reported it; the American Fork Citizen’s contemporaneous reporting and its August 14 signed op-ed; the city’s public-notice page, checked August 14
56:17On August 14 the American Fork Citizen published a signed op-ed by Joseph Call, a seven-year resident who spoke at the June 9 council meeting and opened, then as now, with support: “I support the police department, and thank you for your service.” His op-ed calls the situation “possibly the most reputationally damaging event in our city’s history,” describes “a communication vacuum being filled by YouTube videos with millions of views,” and lands on one ask: “An independent third-party investigation into AFPD is warranted.” Eleven days before the council votes on the property tax increase.
On its own, that is one resident’s opinion, and it is graded as exactly that below. What makes it reportable is the series it completes. For ten weeks, in the town’s own meetings and its own paper, the instruments a resident is supposed to use to get an answer about the police department have been described, by the people who tried to use them, as broken.
The instruments, in the town’s own words
| The instrument | Who tried it | What they said |
|---|---|---|
| The online complaint system | A resident at the June 9 podium, who invoked the right “to petition the government” | “No confirmation record of your filing at all”… it “destroys your work when you violate unspecified rules” |
| The chief’s 26-minute video | Daniel Soroka, June 9; Joseph Call, August 14 | “Went on… a media release and lied to the public. He stated that the individual did not complete a traffic stop” (Soroka) · it “may have given more fuel to the flame rather than quenching it” (Call) |
| The mayor’s voice | The town’s paper, June 18 | “Mayor Brad Frost did not respond to attempts to reach him.” His one in-meeting reply, June 9, per the same report: “we hear you, we see you… and we will go to work.” No formal statement has appeared on the city’s notice page since (checked August 14) |
| The budget presentation | A resident who served twelve years on that council, August 11 hearing | “Very much feels that it’s not being honest” (as this site reported) |
| The council inbox | Council Member Ernie John, June 9 | “I personally have gotten hundreds of emails sometimes a day… I want you to know I can’t respond to them all, but I have read every single one” |
PRIMARY SOURCEJune 9 quotes verified against the council meeting video; speaker names per the American Fork Citizen’s June 18 report of the same meeting; the mayor’s row rests on that report; the August 11 row is this site’s published account of the hearing
Where the asks went instead
When the inside instruments fail, the asks move to instruments the city does not control. At the June 9 podium, a speaker identified in the local paper’s report as Alex Sabin said it first:
“Stop shielding the AFPD and initiate a formal, independent third-party audit… Our rights are not optional, and the status quo is no longer acceptable.”
Since then: a resident announced from the August 11 hearing floor that he had retained counsel for a federal civil-rights suit over his own stop, as this site reported. At the same hearing, residents turned the tax increase itself into the lever, making the police department’s legal exposure a line item in the budget conversation, covered here. And on August 14 the audit ask arrived in the town’s own paper, this time from a supporter. Two voices, two months apart, one police-critical and one police-supporting, arriving at the same instrument: an audit the city does not control.
The cost of asking
One June 9 exchange belongs in this record on its own. Daniel Soroka, after disputing the chief’s account of the traffic stop, closed with this:
“I am in fear of standing here… because that is what they did to this individual. And if they’re willing to do that to them, they are willing to do that to me and to anyone else.”
A resident of the city, on the record, in the council chamber, saying he fears retribution for speaking. Whatever one makes of his claims, the sentence itself is now part of the town’s record of itself.
The op-ed, both edges
Call’s piece is not a broadside, which is what makes it hard to dismiss. He spends as much ink on the other side. He describes Schneider as “a YouTuber whose M.O. is self-proclaimed recklessness, confrontation, provocation, and testing boundaries.” He reports that Schneider “enlisted a local member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to approach the Bricks and Minifigs franchise owner ‘Mormon to Mormon,’” and that Schneider “had another member of his group impersonate a delivery driver.” He pushes back on the claim “that the ‘Mormons’ are in cahoots with each other.” And on the city’s legal exposure he is careful: “the outcome of such a lawsuit is certainly not a given.”
One precision note his op-ed needs: he writes that there has been “nothing from the mayor and nothing from any member of the City Council who represents us.” That is true of formal statements: the city’s public-notice page carries none, and the paper could not reach the mayor in June. It is not quite true of the record inside the chamber: the August 11 session engaged the liability question directly, and Council Member John says he reads every email. The op-ed does not mention the August 11 session; it reads as written before it.
“We need them. We also need to be able to trust them. Let’s fix this. Brick by brick.”
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