Zook pleased that laws are toughened against child pornography

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LOGAN — On KVNU’s For the People program on Monday, Cache County Executive David Zook thanked the public for their continued support in the recent election season.

“It’s kind of interesting, we had several, actually all of our countywide county elected officials are running unopposed. So, our sheriff, our county attorney, myself, our county clerk, the four of us are countywide officials and nobody filed to run against us. Which we all would like to take as a vote of confidence, so thank you to the voters for that vote of confidence,” he explained.

As far as the recent session of the Utah Legislature is concerned, Zook is happy with passage of a new law that will strengthen sentencing for those convicted of child pornography, an issue he feels strongly about.

If you’re manufacturing it, or distributing it, you can be charged now with a first degree felony, which comes with a much tougher penalty. And there’s a lot more work that needs to be done.”

At a meeting held with law enforcement officials along with the Malouf Foundation, that fights child exploitation, it was said by some attendees that toughening the penalty was not going to be easy.

“After that meeting,” Zook explained, “I went to Senator Chris Wilson, and I said ‘Senator Wilson we had this meeting, we’ve identified this problem, will you help us, will you run a bill to do this?’ It took him about two seconds to say ‘Absolutely, I will totally run that bill, I will make it my top priority.’ And he did.”

Zook said the next law he would like to try to toughen is when someone is convicted of enticing a minor over the internet. He said in a recent case, the perpetrator was sentenced to probation.

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1 Comment

  • Bo March 17, 2022 at 8:29 am Reply

    We need to have tougher punishments for a lot of crimes, particularly for repeat offenders. There are too many people offending over and over again, with minimal repercussion, and the crimes get worse and worse. We’re not teaching anyone a lesson by babying them, other than that they can pretty much do whatever they want.

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