New Boise police chief proposes these steps to boost transparency, discipline, training
After two weeks as Boise’s chief of police, Ryan Lee is taking look at what he wants to change during his time leading the city’s police force.
Lee told the Boise City Council on Tuesday that Boise is a strong example of the community policing model, which is based on the idea that police officers who build strong ties with their communities are better officers and help to drive crime rates down.
Lee compared Boise’s crime rate per capita to Salt Lake City’s and Spokane’s since 2000 as an example of the success of the Boise Police Department. Not only did crime in Boise start lower, Lee told the council, but crime rates have dropped in the years since.
But, he said, there is still room for improvement.
Lee presented several proposals he’d like to work on during his first year in his role, rooted in ideas he think will help better relationships between the department and residents.
Transparency: He said the biggest overarching goal is increasing transparency.
“It is key and fundamental in the 21st century to maintain legitimacy to give people timely access to the information about their police department,” he said. “It’s just what people have come to expect.”
Lee proposed several ways to make that goal a reality, including plans to create a dashboard documenting resident contacts and officers’ use of force.
The Ada County Sheriff’s Office has such a dashboard, documenting how often sheriff’s deputies use of force. Sheriff Stephen Bartlett prided himself on that two weeks ago when answering questions during a town hall. That dashboard breaks out force numbers by incidents in the jail and incidents on patrol.
Policy and discipline: Lee said he also wants to update the Boise Police Department’s policy manual, the department’s guiding document, “to conform with national best practices.” He wants the department’s discipline process to be updated too.
“I believe there’s a need to revamp the discipline process so that it is both more transparent to the membership as well as the community and that the outcomes are much more consistent, even after my hopefully long tenure as chief is served out,” he said.
Training: He said the department’s training curriculum could be updated. He said he has found a way to “reallocate savings” from COVID-19 to make sure every member of the department can receive 40 hours of crisis-intervention training by the end of the year.
Council members ask about budget, mental health, outreach
Council members asked about other changes they would like to see.
Council Member Jimmy Hallyburton asked if Lee thought it would be possible for the department to bring its budget before the council in a way that breaks out each line item rather than presenting it as a large sum.
The police department is the largest funding item in Boise’s budget, accounting for about 30% of the proposed general fund budget for the 2021 fiscal year, which begins in October. Mayor Lauren McLean’s proposed 2021 budget, although as a whole smaller than last year’s, asks for $71.2 million for the police department, up from just over $70 million (or about 29% of the total budget) in 2020.
Nationwide, activists have asked their local governments to defund police departments and put the money toward social services, but Lee and McLean have said they do not support defunding.
Lee told Hallyburton that he is working to make the budget more transparent so the public can better understand it and to make it easier to manage internally.
“I think the other key as we move toward developing a more transparent budget would be to put in performance metrics so that the public understands when we’re succeeding and spending those dollars,” he said.
Hallyburton asked whether Lee saw any additional resources going toward people with mental health concerns, particularly given the stress COVID-19 has caused. Lee said “there is room to expand the behavioral health unit.”
Council President Elaine Clegg asked about the outreach Lee planned to develop ways to implement his ideas.
Lee said he is seeking out diverse voices and engaging community members. He said he had met with the local president of the NAACP and other minority community members already.
“It’s essential we get public input,” Lee said.
He said he wants to share the department’s policy manual publicly to give the community the chance to weigh in.
“That would be a significant change over the current approach and would be a convenient way to help engage the public as we start to start to improve an already high-performing organization,” he said.
This story was originally published July 14, 2020 at 10:10 PM.
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