Rising crime in Taylorsville is getting scary for city residents as well as Salt Lake Community College students.
“It seems like there’s getting to be more and more crime here,” says Margaret Player, a long time Taylorsville resident.
She is right. There is more crime in Taylorsville. According to “Sperlings best places”, a web based city information finder, Taylorsville has a violent crime rate that ranks 5 on a 1-10 scale. The national average is 3, while the quiet upper class suburban neighborhood of Sandy, Utah ranks a hardly visible 2. Magna is known throughout the valley to be crime ridden, yet it ranked at a middle of the road 3.
Eric Hasebi, a SLCC Alumni, had a shaky experience recently in Taylorsville as he was stopped at a red light in front of Carl’s Jr. on Redwood Road. He was heading home from work when a woman jumped into his car next to him.
She was visibly upset and after crying for him to “just drive” he proceeded out of the parking lot and onto the roadway. After she calmed down a bit, he told her he would drop her at a gas station at 3300 South and 2-15.
He dropped her off and after watching her go into the gas station he proceeded home, hoping she was a distraught citizen and not on the run from police.
He soon learned the answer to what she was when in the middle of the night he was awakened by police and told that his vehicle was seen picking up the girl and driving away with her.
Allegedly she had robbed a local Costco and was on the run from police. He had unknowingly become her getaway driver. He was wanted for questioning as to the whereabouts of the girl.
A current SLCC student had a similar experience, but instead of someone getting into a car in Taylorsville, he witnessed a man jumping out of a car.
Patrick Kuhre was sitting in the drive-thru of a coffee shop on 4800 South and Redwood road when he witnessed a man jump out of his car and approach another man that was walking down the sidewalk.
After exchanging words one man punched the other one and a brawl ensued.
“It was pretty brutal,” Kuhre said. He said he was shocked as he watched the scene play out. He continued; “It was sorta scary.”
Accoring to the Taylorsville city website’s crime report, in the past month there have been more violent crime calls to 911 in Taylorsville than traffic calls and there was more calls in the March than the previous month of February.