A man who has worked in multiple countries to improve homeless services has agreed to debate Utah’s House speaker on the effectiveness of the police-led operation that cleared hundreds of people from a downtown Salt Lake City neighborhood and led to almost 1,700 arrests and counting.
The two men – consultant Iain De Jong and House Speaker Greg Hughes – clashed in recent days, with De Jong criticizing the approach of Operation Rio Grande and Hughes, an architect of the effort, defending the arrests and police activity.
Hughes didn’t respond to Tribune requests for comment. But in a Deseret News article Tuesday, he challenged De Jong to debate “anytime, anywhere.