Dear Mr. Anderson:

Thank you for your recent letter concerning The Tribune's coverage of Wally Bugden. It's always nice to hear from readers. Hell, at this point, it's nice to have readers.

While I have no capacity to speak for The Tribune as a whole, I say you're free to criticize the newspaper. The Tribune shines a critical light on many and is not above accepting the same.

But can you shoot a little bit of your criticism toward the city of Ivins?

Ever since Mr. Bugden was arrested, The Tribune's crime desk has been asking Ivins police to give us a statement, a police report, a poem, a crop circle pattern, an interpretive dance or something else indicating what happened.



Thus far the answers have all been no. The police department has denied our GRAMA request.

That means we don't know the facts of Mr. Bugden's arrest — only that he was booked into the Washington County jail on suspicion of public intoxication.

That could mean he was harmless in the lotus position, as you claim.* Or he was running drunk up Snow Canyon Parkway, shouting the rules of evidence and asking Relief Society members to tug on his bow tie.

I'm making up that latter version of events. But I can't verify your information, either, and everyone is left to wonder what really happened.

Let me know if you hear anything from Ivins. Thanks again for writing. And, for heaven's sake, please keep reading.

Sincerely,

Nate Carlisle
Salt Lake Tribune


*If true, then a guy with access to a free legal defense decides to get drunk and ornery and the the best he can think of is the lotus position? Public intoxication is wasted on the middle-aged and well educated.

Labels: Crime, GRAMA