Boise mayor wanted ex-police oversight director to act against purported false complaints
Boise emails and documents shed light on the months leading up to the police oversight director’s dismissal, which include allegations about how the director, Jesus Jara, handled confidential information and addressed complaints about the former police chief.
Boise Mayor Lauren McLean, along with then-council leaders Elaine Clegg and Holli Woodings, in a memorandum recently obtained by the Idaho Statesman, indicated that the Office of Police Accountability spent “significant resources” investigating false claims against former Police Chief Ryan Lee.
It’s unclear what all of the complaints sent to Jara about Lee were. But emails from a Boise police supervisor obtained by the Statesman through a source showed that at least some of the allegations against Lee alleged that he retaliated against officers, made derogatory comments about residents and brought “substandard training” to the department.
The Statesman has submitted additional public records requests and asked the mayor’s office for more information about the complaints but has been told it is a personnel matter.
Since Jara’s firing, the former director has sued the city, arguing he was discriminated and retaliated against for investigating complaints about the former chief. In a response filing on Jan. 20, the city denied Jara’s claims.
In a response first emailed to BoiseDev and forwarded to the Statesman, an attorney for Jara, Grady Hepworth, said that the city had yet to produce documents related to Jara’s lawsuit, which were requested in December. Hepworth asked whether it was suspicious that the city was fulfilling public records requests “before Mr. Jara himself has even been able to review any documents.”
“Has it occurred to you that you may be being fed a narrative that the city wants you to report, without being given the extensive counter-evidence?” Hepworth wrote. “You are clearly being manipulated, and we cannot participate in this calculated political stunt and misinformation campaign.”
City leaders critical of oversight office
The city’s leaders criticized Jara for not taking internal or criminal action against any of the officers that may have filed false complaints, saying that it is a misdemeanor to provide false information to officers or government officials.
”OPA indicated to city leadership that it determined some of the allegations investigated against Chief Lee were false,” the Nov. 1 memo said. “We are not aware of any action OPA has taken against the individuals who lodged false complaints.”
In early 2022, nine officers, some of whom were high-ranking, filed complaints against Lee to the oversight office after at least one of the officers was turned away by the city’s human resources department.
In response, Jara drafted a memo to McLean, noting that his office had met with nine people who had complaints, recommended a third-party review of the complaints, and also suggested that Lee be placed on administrative leave while the investigation was conducted.
In a May memo to Jara from Courtney Washburn, the mayor’s chief of staff and Jara’s supervisor, she wrote that while no violations had been discovered, “through this information, we have identified the need to create more robust policies and procedures to ensure clarity and predictability” for Boise police employees.
After Lee resigned, McLean told the Statesman that Jara’s recommendation had “waded into personnel matters,” which was not authorized by the OPA’s ordinance.
The mayor did take up Jara’s recommendation to have a third-party review the complaints, which determined that Lee had not committed any crimes or violated any city policies, McLean previously told the Statesman.
Documents obtained by the Statesman through public records requests showed that Ryan Henson, an attorney with Bevis, Thiry, Henson & Katz, in Boise, was contracted by the city to investigate officer-involved shootings and use of force instances within the Boise Police Department, and that he reviewed the complaints against Lee that were sent to OPA as part of his work.
A spokesperson for the mayor’s office, Maria Weeg, told the Statesman by email that Henson was hired to help clear a backlog of investigations within the Office of Internal Affairs, an internal police department office that reviews complaints and significant incidents.
Weeg at the time said she did not know which specific cases Henson had reviewed. Through a public records request, the Statesman obtained an invoice that showed the city paid Henson’s firm $3,040 in August. The invoice’s description reads “City of Boise — Chief Ryan Lee.”
An attachment showed Henson did the work in April, days after Jara had send the memo to Washburn.
Henson’s contract totaled a maximum of $25,000, according to the records.
Based on Henson’s hourly rate of $200, as stated in the contract, he spent about 15 hours reviewing the complaints against Lee.
Henson could not immediately be reached for comment.
Jara gets further scrutiny
The city further scrutinized Jara’s tenure when, according to Weeg, Jara told leaders of the police department — Deputy Chief Tammany Brooks and Capt. Jeff Niiya — that he had been widely watching police body camera footage.
According to a copy of Jara’s calendar obtained by the Statesman through a public records request, he had a meeting with Brooks and Niiya on Nov. 3.
Brooks or Niiya told McLean about Jara’s reviews, after which the city restricted his video camera access, Weeg said.
Elaine Clegg, the former council president, previously told the Statesman in an interview that the oversight office is not supposed to decide for itself what to audit, but rather is only meant to review defined categories of critical incidents.
Though, as first reported by BoiseDev, Jara had described his “random on-body video” audits during a City Council meeting in March, Clegg said she had not understood him to mean that he was frequently reviewing actual body camera footage.
At a Nov. 22 meeting, as previously reported by the Statesman, Jara told McLean and members of the City Council that he had reviewed more than 8,000 body camera videos since the fall of 2021, according to notes taken from the meeting.
“I’m deeply concerned about the invasion of privacy this unauthorized surveillance constitutes,” McLean said in a statement when Jara was fired. ”Our residents are often at their most vulnerable when they call the police to intervene when other measures have fallen short.”
City objects to no attorney
In the Nov. 1 memo, city leaders said Jara had released confidential information “in violation of state code,” and that he’d been slow to hire outside counsel to review his work. The OPA regulations state that, in the course of the office’s work, the director “will consult with assigned legal counsel.”
“OPA was reticent to obtain legal counsel after being instructed to do so,” the memo said. “During that time, OPA was conducting investigations and closing out complaints without the advice of an independent attorney.”
According to public records obtained by the Statesman, the OPA office retained Bryan Knox, an attorney with White, Petersen, Gigray and Nichols, of Nampa, in June.
In invoices from the Knox firm sent to the city, which were also obtained by the Statesman through records requests, the firm describes reviewing city law applicable to the OPA office, reviewing cases and subpoenas, as well as reviews of communications with media.
One invoice, from July, noted that the mayor’s office “wants him to copy me on all ‘sensitive’ emails.” Several entries in an invoice mentions reviewing records requests or inquiries from the Statesman.
In early October, the Statesman had emailed Jara a set of questions about the office’s work, asking about how it reviews complaints, whether those complaints are publicized, and how Jara reviewed the complaints against Lee. Jara forwarded the email to Knox, writing “FYI.” Jara never responded to the Statesman.
In November, in response to an email from the Statesman asking about OPA’s six-month audits of Boise police, Jara responded that the audits are presented in the annual report, which would be published in late January.
Jara was fired in December.
Knox did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Washburn emails shed light on complaints
In emails between Washburn and Jara recently obtained by the Statesman, Washburn said she appreciated Jara’s efforts to increase “public trust” in law enforcement after he sent her the complaints. In October, after Lee resigned, she sent Jara several emails asking for more information about them.
On Sept. 29, six days after Lee resigned, Washburn sent an email to Jara asking him to tell his attorney to “redact personal information” from a binder of information about the complaints against Lee so that she could share the information with the City Council while protecting the identities of the complainants.
On Oct. 3, after Jara had sent her the “investigation report” about Lee, Washburn responded: “I don’t believe this was an investigation report but a report of complaint intakes.”
Washburn emailed Jara again a few days later, telling him to be available for a private City Council meeting and asking him to “prepare to provide your thinking and process on the actions you took associated with the OPA complaints and memo,” referring to a memo about the complaints Jara sent to McLean and Washburn in early April. “As is the city practice, the mayor and council would like the opportunity to learn more about this issue prior to any communications to the public or press.”
On Oct. 13, an email from Washburn to Jara asked him to “suspend all complaint intakes of BPD employees,” and instead asked him to refer those employees to human resources.
A day later, Jara responded: “Message received. We will refer BPD staff accordingly.”
In the Nov. 1 memo, city leadership wrote that “after receiving a memo clarifying OPA’s scope of authority and discussing the matter with city leadership, OPA continues to meet with BPD officers and intake HR related complaints.”
In another memo written the same day, and a day after a meeting with McLean, Woodings and Clegg, the leaders informed Jara that OPA would be “accountable” to three council members.
Later that month, before another meeting with city leaders, Jara wrote up an agenda for a Nov. 22 meeting, during which he would discuss, among other things, his “audit work.” It was at that meeting that Jara told the city leaders he had reviewed over 8,000 body camera videos, according to previous Statesman reporting.
Reporter Alex Brizee contributed.
This story was originally published January 29, 2023 at 4:00 AM.
