How Ada County sheriff just responded to questions on race, use of force, neck holds
Ada County Sheriff Stephen Bartlett says he prides himself on transparent conversations with the community.
Wednesday night, he held a virtual town hall meeting and answered questions submitted by about 30 participants on everything from fireworks to the use of force by sheriff’s deputies.
Bartlett’s town hall came one day after confrontations and some fighting between Black Lives Matter supporters and counter-protesters, who included white nationalists, at Boise City Hall. It came the same day Boise swore in its new police chief, Ryan Lee.
The Republican sheriff, who seeks re-election to a second four-year term in November, oversees the biggest law-enforcement agency in Idaho, with 740 employees. The Sheriff’s Office runs the county jail, provides countywide emergency dispatching, operates police departments for Kuna, Eagle and Star, and polices the rest of the county except Boise, Meridian and Garden City, which have their own police departments.
As debate rages nationally about the role of police forces in communities, Bartlett weighed in on how his office works to develop policies and ensure they are being followed.
“The topic of policing, the topic of how our law enforcement and sheriff’s offices are interacting with our communities, is high on everybody’s radar,” he said at the start of the event. “We thought it would be critically important for us just to sit down and talk with our community members, talk with our stakeholders, our partners, and have a conversation that’s exactly that. How are we doing?”
Race, policing, bias training
Bartlett answered several questions on the role race plays in policing.
He said his office has invested in classes and other tools to make sure employees “are receiving the highest level of training,” including a “verbal defense and influence class,” implicit-bias training, and sessions where the department brings in members of different communities, including faith groups and refugees.
“That’s an important piece of that — do not have your mind made up or have established what you think is going to happen until you stand in front of that client, in front of that citizen, and actively listen to figure out what the problem is,” Bartlett said.
Asked if his office monitors “disparate treatment of minority races,” Bartlett said the sheriff’s office is a data-driven agency and there is “nothing that we do that we don’t monitor.”
He said the department tries to match its employees’ racial demographics to those of Ada County residents, noting that his office is “very close.” According to numbers provided by the county, Ada County is about 90.7% white, 8% Hispanic or Latino, 2.7% Asian and 1.4% Black. Employees of the sheriff’s office are 91.2% white, 5.1% Hispanic, 1.7% Asian or Pacific Islander and 1.7% Black.
“We’re actively trying to hire people that meet the demand, meet the need, whether that’s a Spanish speaker or a race employee,” he said. “Rest assured that we are actively doing that, but one of the things that we want to ensure is more important … is making sure that it’s the right person, with the right ethics and morals and right amount of kindness.”
Use of force, de-escalation
Asked about the tracking of incidents in which deputies use force, Bartlett pointed to his office’s website, where data on force used both in the Ada County Jail and on patrol is documented.
“I’m happy to tell you that our use-of-force numbers fall directly in line where we as a citizen base, me as the sheriff, would expect those to be,” he said. In the last 30 months, patrol calls have force used 0.12% of the time, he said, and among contacts and calls for service in the jail, force is used 0.03% of the time.
Bartlett said the department is always looking for better de-escalation techniques to make those numbers “a little bit better.”
Every one of his employees goes through de-escalation training, he said, including those who work as emergency dispatchers.
“We took a stand a couple of years ago here where we felt it was so critical that we were going to have every one of our employees go through that training,” he said, adding that critical listening is an important part of it.
When force is used, the Ada County Sheriff’s Office has a group of employees in its administrative investigative team that evaluates the resulting reports, Bartlett said. Legal staff also review force reports, and the office has a database that allows officials to monitor force.
George Floyd, chokeholds, sleeper holds
He addressed the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly 9 minutes, calling it “tragic.”
“That is why training, refreshers and an obligation to ensure that our policies match our practices is so vital,” Bartlett said.
He said that his department does not use chokeholds, which restrict a person’s airflow. The department does use neck restraints, however, which instead restrict blood flow. He said employees are trained on them each year and must learn how such holds — sometimes called sleeper holds — affect a person’s body.
The Boise Police Department last week banned the holds, known as lateral vascular neck restraints, in which an officer puts pressure on a person’s carotid artery to cut off blood flow and can cause a person to temporarily lose consciousness.
Bartlett said neck holds have been used 31 times in the last 30 months and “zero medical or physical injuries resulted.”
Mask enforcement, fireworks, Boise’s Ryan Lee
Bartlett also addressed several other topics:
Masks: He talked briefly about facial coverings used to prevent the spread of COVID-19, saying he asked his staff to wear masks. Asked if he would enforce a mask mandate, he said no city in the county has mandated masks, nor has Ada County beyond its county buildings.
“We’re not there,” he said.
Boise’s new police chief: He said he was looking forward to meeting with Ryan Lee, who was sworn in earlier Wednesday.
Bartlett regularly meets with other local law enforcement leaders, he said, to have conversations about how the region can do better and to reduce taxes and redundancies in services.
“We have had a phenomenal relationship with the last couple of Boise chiefs, and we look forward to engaging with Chief Lee,” Bartlett said.
Fireworks: He encouraged people to be safe during the upcoming holiday weekend, especially when using fireworks. Fireworks are banned in unincorporated Ada County, and many city shows have been canceled this year to try to fight the spread of COVID-19.
Bartlett encouraged those who attend fireworks displays to follow social distancing rules. If people feel that fireworks are a danger to their community, he said, he encourages them to call Ada County Dispatch at 208-377-6790.
The Fourth of July is one of the busiest nights of the year for his office, he said, and dispatch officials will be able to route calls for service to the agency best equipped to handle it.
He asked people not to set off illegal fireworks.
“We want everybody to be safe,” Bartlett said. “We want everybody to have a chance to enjoy their families and just enjoy Ada County.”
Several times throughout his talk, Bartlett encouraged people to reach out to his office with questions or concerns, and he said he looked forward to interacting with large groups again when circumstances allow.
This story was originally published July 1, 2020 at 9:48 PM.
.jpg)