Changes in Boise police office should help answer questions of ‘defunding,’ use of force

Too often, discussions about the police generate more heat than light. Debates about “defunding the police,” use of force and “blue lives matter” devolve into emotional arguments and sides retreating to their corners.

Last year’s murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer brought those issues to the forefront locally and nationally, and spurred a debate about law enforcement’s role in our country.

What’s the proper funding amount for a police department? What use of force, if any, should be used by a police officer, and when? What training should be required? What protections exist for a police officer who witnesses bad behavior by a fellow officer? How should a police department respond to mental health-related calls?

While the city of Boise has been largely immune to many “big city” problems so far, it has not been immune to such questions and debates.

As more people move to our area, those big-city problems will no doubt increase. Unfortunately, we’re also likely to have negative outcomes from police-public interactions.

Being proactive and prepared for such issues will be important.

That’s why we support proposed changes to the city of Boise’s Office of Police Oversight.

City officials are replacing the existing part-time director position with a full-time director and changing the name to Office of Police Accountability. City officials are looking to increase the office’s ability to conduct audits, do research and help to create policy based on data.

“From those audits, we expect to see patterns and trends, and have much deeper conversations about police policy than we’ve been able to have over the last few years,” City Council President Elaine Clegg told the editorial board in a video interview.

So, for example, the director could look at a series of cases or incidents to see whether there are trends or negative outcomes that could be avoided with a change in policy or a change in training.

Clegg has been involved in the city’s police oversight process since the first days that the city established an ombudsman, in 1999, when the Boise Police Department was dealing with a spate of police shootings. The ombudsman was able to respond to complaints and recommend changes in the department, which improved matters, Clegg said.

Consequently, complaints from the public dropped. When then-ombudsman Pierce Murphy left Boise, the Office of the Community Ombudsman became the Office of Police Oversight in 2015, with a part-time director.

Clegg said the office still will have the ability to conduct independent investigations of complaints against the police department. We feel this will be an important function to maintain, especially in critical incidents and cases where force is used by a police officer.

Rather than reviewing a Boise Police Department internal affairs report and gathering further information as needed, Clegg said the new model would put an investigator, requested by the Office of Police Accountability, at the site of a critical incident to conduct first-hand interviews and collect information independently right from the start.

We are encouraged by the idea that the office will be able to provide data-based and research-based recommendations for policy changes and budget decisions.

“We expect that the real purpose of this office at this point and the value of it in the immediate future will be the research and the trend analysis that we will get, so that we can really dig into policy,” Clegg said.

We envision the Office of Police Accountability researching policies and best practices of other cities across the country to see what works and what doesn’t work, and making recommendations to the City Council for potential changes.

Further, if City Council members find themselves in a discussion about whether to increase or decrease funding for BPD, the Office of Police Accountability should be able to provide data to inform any decision.

While we support the proposed changes, we want to make sure that the city doesn’t lose outreach to the community, particularly to minority communities. It will be vital to maintain positive relationships with all segments of the population.

Further, we’d like to see a review six months after the changes and then one year after, with some sort of measurement for success and improvement.

If anything, we’d like to see the office expanded more.

As Boise grows, duties of this office will surely grow. We’d like to see city officials be proactive and be ahead of the curve when it comes to problems and new ways of policing.

Changes in this office are steps in the right direction.

This story was originally published June 4, 2021 at 4:00 AM.