Boise police officer sues city, asking for records of internal investigation
A Boise police officer has asked a judge to compel the city to release internal investigative files about his conduct, according to a lawsuit.
Sean T. Stace, a corporal and 15-year veteran with the department, accused the city’s legal department of denying him his personnel files “in bad faith.”
It is not clear why Stace was under investigation.
In an October email included in the lawsuit, a police lieutenant, Jeff Niiya, mentions that the investigation was “sustained.” In a text message, police spokesperson Haley Williams told the Idaho Statesman that “sustained” means that “the investigation disclosed sufficient evidence to clearly prove the allegation(s) made.”
In emails included with the lawsuit, the city said it was not obligated to supply an officer with all internal investigative documents against him.
In August, Stace was told by a superior that he was under internal investigation following a citizen complaint against him, according to the lawsuit, filed Nov. 14 in 4th District Court in Boise. Stace was subsequently interviewed by the department’s Office of Internal Affairs, or OIA, which investigates alleged wrongdoing within the department and is semi-independent of it.
Once the investigation was completed in September, an internal investigator filed a final report, and a “pre-disciplinary hearing” was later scheduled for Nov. 14, according to the lawsuit.
After the investigation was finished, a lawyer representing Stace, Joseph Mallet, asked for the full investigation. The police department sent Stace a copy of the investigation’s final report and a recording of his interview with Internal Affairs but declined to send the investigation’s supporting documents, the lawsuit said.
Under the department’s policy manual, employees are entitled to view their Internal Affairs file once an investigation is finished, according to the lawsuit.
“... Sean is entitled to review the full IA case file, not just the report, and that was not provided,” Mallet wrote in an email to a deputy city attorney, Bryan Norton, which was included with the lawsuit.
Mallet declined to comment for this article.
“(The city) has frivolously and in bad faith refused to provide Stace access to all of the requested documents which relate to him and are his own personnel records,” the lawsuit said. It alleged that the city was violating Idaho’s public records law and asked a judge to order the remaining files be released to Stace.
A Boise spokesperson, Maria Weeg, declined to comment on this case, but said “employees can absolutely have access to their own personnel records,” adding that there are occasions when “parts of those records would be withheld,” and that there is an “exemption during ongoing investigations.”
Norton, the deputy city attorney, told Mallet in an email that the Police Department’s policy requires release only of an investigation’s final report, and that “this does not mean the city throws (open) all of its investigations into the officer for them to examine.”
In a subsequent email, Norton said that if a judge were to require the city to release more documents, it would “be a huge expansion of what courts have interpreted the Idaho Public Records Act to require. Such a ruling, if upheld on appeal, would force the city to release each officer’s OIA file to any member of the public who asked for them.”
Boise’s police investigations have come under scrutiny in recent months, after at least one officer alleged that complaints about former Police Chief Ryan Lee were not properly investigated, and that the department was not sufficiently independent, as it was still overseen by the chief. Lee resigned at Mayor Lauren McLean’s request in September.
Earlier this month, a retired captain who used to oversee internal investigations, Tom Fleming, sued the city, alleging that Lee and other police employees had interfered with ongoing investigations multiple times.
Another department at the city, the Office of Police Accountability, is tasked with auditing the police department’s internal investigations.
This story was originally published November 18, 2022 at 11:26 AM.
