Boise mayor puts police accountability head on leave: ‘Must have confidence in this office’
Boise Mayor Lauren McLean placed the director of the city’s semi-independent police oversight agency on administrative leave on Friday, marking another episode in a tumultuous few months at the Police Department and City Hall.
Jesus Jara, the director of the Office of Police Accountability, is responsible for auditing the police department and investigating citizen complaints.
In a Friday news release, the mayor, along with Council President Elaine Clegg and Council members Holli Woodings and Jimmy Hallyburton, said the reason for Jara being placed on administrative leave was “in response to ongoing concerns with professional judgment and lack of confidence in the actions of the office.”
“We must have confidence in this office and trust the judgment of its director,” said McLean and council leadership. “This step is necessary to protect the interests of our police officers and the public.”
A statement on Jara’s behalf was released through his lawyer, Hepworth Law Offices, and said that “Boise’s issuance of a public press release within minutes of placing a public servant on paid administrative leave is not only highly irregular, but inconsistent with city policy, and appears to be nothing but a calculated political stunt.”
The statement also said Jara “objects to the defamatory implication that Mr. Jara has somehow undermined the ‘confidence’ of the Office of Police Accountability,” noting that he has acted with “utmost diligence and integrity.”
The statement, first reported by KTVB, notes that Jara hired Hepworth to represent the director “regarding issues of retaliation, violations of law, and breach of contract by the city of Boise,” and that Jara cannot comment on his “previously filed grievances.”
Clegg told the Statesman by phone that officials ”made the judgment and it was time to do it,” declining to give further details on a personnel matter. The police department “is an incredibly important department to the city of Boise and I’m committed to ensuring we have the best police department we can have and that it works for our citizens.”
Mayor faults director for memorandum
Last April, Jara wrote a memorandum to McLean elaborating on formal complaints his office had received from Boise police officers about then-Police Chief Ryan Lee. In the memo, as first reported by KTVB and later obtained by the Statesman, Jara recommended Lee be placed on administrative leave while the complaints were examined.
The chief was not placed on leave, and a review by a third-party firm found that department policies had not been violated, according to the mayor.
Separately, a criminal investigation into Lee about another allegation, that he had injured a subordinate’s neck during a demonstration, found no charges were warranted, though a prosecutor said it was a “close call.”
According to emails reviewed by the Statesman, officers brought their complaints about Lee to the city’s Human Resources Department and to the Office of Police Accountability because of concerns that Lee would interfere with the complaints if they were brought to the Police Department’s Office of Internal Affairs, which the chief oversees.
Though the mayor did not take action against Lee last spring, after the complaints and allegations from multiple officers surfaced publicly in September, McLean asked Lee to resign.
In an interview with the Statesman in October, McLean said Jara had “waded into personnel matters” and his recommendation was “unauthorized by their ordinance.”
The complaints against Lee “shared a common theme of disliking management style and decision,” a spokesperson for the mayor’s office, Maria Weeg, told the Statesman in a Friday email. Weeg also shared further details about the eight complaints from nine officers, as first reported by BoiseDev:
- Two of the complaints “lacked sufficient information for further action.”
- One is connected to a closed Idaho State Police investigation and an ongoing Office of Internal Affairs investigation.
- One is an ongoing investigation about “an incident that occurred outside of Ada County.”
- One was investigated by Internal Affairs and closed.
- One was investigated and closed by “another police agency.”
- Three were “disagreements with management decisions including treatment of officers, discipline, equipment selection, policy changes, and hiring practices and promotions.”
One of the officers who complained, retired Captain Tom Fleming, led internal investigations at Boise police before he retired. In November, he filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the city, alleging retaliation and discrimination against him by Lee.
Cpl. Brian Holland, a spokesperson for the Boise police union, told the Statesman by phone that it’s “refreshing” to see consistency on how investigations are handled as police officers are placed on leave when they are being investigated.
“It’s understandable they need to make sure they get to the bottom of things,” he said, adding that if an investigation clears Jara, then he should also be exonerated like any officer on leave would be.
Announcement comes after white supremacy revelations
The mayor’s announcement of Jara’s placement on leave comes less than two weeks after a high-ranking and recently retired Boise police captain was determined to be the author of white supremacist online posts.
Matt Bryngelson, who worked for Boise police for over two decades and retired in August, was also one of the nine officers who complained to the Office of Police Accountability about Lee.
In posts under a pseudonym, Bryngelson made racist statements connecting Black and Hispanic people with a predilection towards crime.
On Wednesday, McLean announced that a prominent Washington, D.C. attorney, Michael Bromwich, would investigate Bryngelson’s tenure at the department, and whether racism has tainted policing.
Jara became the director of the accountability office in August 2021, after the oversight department was created earlier that summer.
Before then, the city had a similar office, called the Office of Police Oversight, that was disbanded after the City Council moved to make the office’s director a full-time, rather than part-time, position.
Reporter Alex Brizee contributed.
This story was originally published December 2, 2022 at 4:28 PM.
