Surprised Boise City Council was given no warning about police chief resignation
Many residents of Boise reacted with surprise to the news that Police Chief Ryan Lee had resigned at the request of the mayor. It seems City Council members were just as caught off guard as the public.
City Council member Jimmy Hallyburton said he returned from a weekend backpacking trip to find an inbox unexpectedly filled with questions about the resignation.
“I had questions and requests for interviews from just about every single press source,” Hallyburton said. “A lot of the stuff that I’m learning, I’m learning about the same time as everybody else. So I’m still trying to understand exactly what’s going on.”
The city announcement came Friday amid complaints from officers, reported by KTVB, and after an investigation into an allegation that he injured a subordinate in a neck-restraints demonstration last year, the Idaho Statesman reported then.
Hallyburton said he was in the dark about complaints against Lee. No police officer came to him with issues. The council was not consulted beforehand about the resignation. If other members knew more than he did, Hallyburton was unaware of it.
The council member said he had a close relationship with Lee and had been “impressed” with the former chief’s policies and management.
“I was really surprised to hear that was going on,” Hallyburton “And really, really sad, to be honest. I think it’s a really difficult time to be in a leadership position for any institution, especially for a police department that has a lot of changes that are being requested from the community.”
The City Council met Tuesday, but did not address Lee’s departure publicly. The meeting agenda was amended to include a closed-door executive session to discuss a personnel matter. Hallyburton said he could not confirm whether the session, which lasted about an hour, was about Lee.
Hallyburton said all council members want more information about the situation. He especially wants to hear more from the Office of Police Accountability, a department that was formed by the city in 2021 to provide “external civilian oversight of police conduct separate from the internal oversight conducted by BPD,” according to the city’s website.
The incident has highlighted the need to figure out OPA and City Council should interact, he said.
For now, the council is looking to gather information to help it provide oversight of the investigation, according to Hallyburton. Council members will also be looking at where systems may have broken down.
“We just want to make sure that if we’ve got systems, that those systems are working, and if the systems aren’t working, we can address where we need to make changes,” Hallyburton said.
The City Council’s priorities going forward include making sure all police employees feel “comfortable and safe at work” and understand the community’s expectations of them, he said.
Until a more permanent replacement is chosen, Hallyburton believes temporary acting Chief Ron Winegar will do well in the interim, saying Winegar has the trust of the department. Winegar also served as acting chief before Lee took the job in 2020.
This story was originally published September 27, 2022 at 5:29 PM.
