Boise Police investigated over 100 force incidents in 2019, including now-banned holds
Boise police officers responded to 152,585 calls for service in 2019, and according to data obtained by The Statesman via records request, there were 111 use of force instances investigated by the Boise Police Department’s administration that year.
Though use of force was documented in well under 1% of the department’s calls, the use of force by police officers has been a topic of heavy scrutiny in many cities around the country, Boise included.
During a City Council meeting in June, then-acting Boise Police Chief Ron Winegar said the department already follows a number of guidelines suggested by national groups to abolish, like chokeholds or strangleholds and shooting at moving cars. The national campaign, known as “8 Can’t Wait,” also calls for the requirement of officers use deescalation tactics first before using force and to give verbal warnings before shooting.
On June 26, the department responded to calls for change and announced it would suspend the use of a type of neck hold previously allowed — Lateral Vascular Neck Restraint, or LVNR.
More commonly known as a “sleeper hold,” the purpose of a LVNR is to put pressure on a person’s carotid artery to cut off blood flow, which can cause a person to temporarily lose consciousness. Police have argued that the LVNR is not a “chokehold” because the move does not cut off airflow, but the Boise Police Department nonetheless decided to do away with the technique.
Lt. Charles Wallace LeBar, who leads the Boise Police Department’s training division, said during an interview (which took place before the department’s suspension of the LVNR) with The Statesman that new officers are taught as a general rule to avoid a subject’s head, neck, sternum and groin.
Chokeholds have especially been under scrutiny since the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. An officer placed his knee on Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes before his death. Wallace LeBar said that the video of Floyd’s death was especially difficult to watch.
“That’s deadly force,” Wallace LeBar said. “I’m shocked someone would do that, that an officer would think that’s OK.”
Deescalation tactics have become more prevalent in the department over the years, according to Natalie Camacho Mendoza, director of Boise’s Office of Police Oversight. She told The Statesman that BPD policies are ever-changing and always subject to review. This type of ongoing policy review led to the department’s move to do away with the LVNR.
However, prior to the neck restraint move being suspended the BPD used the tactic dozens of times in 2019, according to the department’s use of force statistics.
Boise’s use of force statistics
There were 111 use of force instances investigated by the Boise Police Department’s administration in 2019, according to data supplied by the department to The Statesman.
For the BPD, certain kinds of force require an administrative review after they’ve been used when responding to an incident, including neck restraints, use of weapons like pepper spray or a Taser, deployment of a K-9, or if a subject is injured.
The second most frequently documented method of force is a LVNR, which was used 37 times in 2019, according to the BPD’s data.
Data provided to The Statesman detail the most frequent type of documented force was “soft empty hand” use, which is an officer using his or her hands to restrain or hold a subject. Records show this was documented 120 times by BPD officers in 2019, by far the most frequently documented use of force. There is also the “hard empty hand” type of force, which in more simple terms is a punch or a kick. This was documented 10 times by the department in 2019.
Data indicates BPD officers used Tasers 16 times in 2019, with three of those instances involving an officer pointing a red laser at an individual without discharging the device.
In the provided data, police documented other types of force, including the use of pressure points to subdue or control subjects, as well as ramming a vehicle and using PIT (pursuit intervention technique) maneuvers, which is when an officer’s squad car hits the back end of a vehicle during a chase to spin the suspect’s car around and bring it to a halt.
The act of putting pressure on nerves like the peroneal nerve (located in the legs) and the suprascapular nerve (found above the collarbones) was documented a total of seven times. PIT maneuvers and ramming a vehicle with a squad car each occurred once in 2019.
Police also document the type of injuries that people receive, with the most common injury being abrasions, or scrapes. Abrasions were documented 52 times, the most common condition or injury observed. In 2019, only one instance was documented that included a broken bone; K-9 bites were documented three times; and lacerations (or cuts) were observed nine times.
Injuries among officers are also documented, though 64% of the cases documented reported that no injuries were noted or visible. The most common injury was abrasions, noted in 23 instances. Officers were taken to a hospital five times of the 111 documented cases of force, according to the data.
Most often, officers say they used force on a person because they physically resisted, which was the case in 51 of the 111 cases. Disobeying commands from officers was the second most often reason, as reported in 23 instances.
Not included in the use of force data is the one officer-involved shooting that took place in Boise last year, as the data set supplied only detailed incidents investigated by the department’s office of internal affairs and tracked in a software called Blue Team, according to Williams.
Incidents where deadly force is used would cause the department to implement its critical incident task force, a separate group that involves members of police agencies around Ada County, according to the Boise Police Department’s manual on policies and procedures. The critical incident task force was only implemented once in 2019, Williams said.
That instance — which took place on Oct. 20 when two officers shot and killed Caldwell woman Amber Dewitt — was screened by the Blaine County prosecutor’s office for possible criminal charges. The two officers were later found to be justified in their actions and cleared of any wrongdoing earlier this year.
Boise Police training
Wallace LeBar said the department conducts its own police academy that takes 22 weeks, or roughly five and a half months to complete. Trainees are educated inside and out of the classroom, Wallace LeBar said.
Recruits are taught deescalation tactics that emphasize communication skills to resolve situations without violence. Wallace LeBar said officers are trained in the classroom and in simulations to use deescalation techniques — using calm voices and talking one at a time when trying to resolve a situation peacefully.
“When we show up on a call, we want to use the least amount of force possible,” Wallace LeBar said. Williams added that once an officer is out of the academy and into the field, the department requires quarterly training.
Camacho Mendoza said the BPD has very strong policies on using force, and its officers have been trained in deescalation tactics, something the department has prioritized in recent years. The department has even been using mental health coordinators that can be dispatched to calls when needed.
“They’re constantly trying to train for those situations,” she said.
In the five years she’s led the oversight office, Camacho Mendoza said the police chiefs she’s worked with have focused on community policing, the idea of actively making connections in the community to build trust with those that police protect and serve. She believes constant front-end oversight helps the department stay on track with its goals. The department wasn’t always like that, she said.
Camacho Mendoza — an attorney since 1991 — remembers back in the late 1990s when a string of officer-involved shootings left the community concerned. The Office of Police Oversight was created after the shootings, bringing a layer of supervision separate from the police department.
Since then, the OPO conducts annual audits of the department; investigates complaints and inquiries made in regards to members of the BPD; and issues semi-annual reports with its findings.
She said Boise is lucky to have independent police oversight, and it’s important that police continue to reexamine policies to see what can be improved.
Wallace LeBar said law enforcement policies are ever-changing and constantly under reviews for improvement. A 19-year veteran of the BPD with 27 total years in law enforcement, Wallace LeBar said he’s witnessed progress toward improving police policies over the years. Williams said the recent push to reform police practices is a continuation of prior improvements.
“This movement is already having an impact,” said Williams. “We want to find those weaknesses.”
