Boise police shootings highlight the need for changes in how they’re investigated | Opinion

The latest police shooting in Boise emphasizes the urgent need to have a more rigorous, independent investigation into such critical incidents. And the public needs and deserves more timely information on what happened.

Boise police shot and killed a man Thursday afternoon after he reportedly charged officers with a weapon, according to the police chief.

As with all of these types of shootings, an investigation will be turned over to a critical incident task force.

If past performance is any indication of the future results, here’s what we can expect: The public will hear nothing about the shooting again for several months while an investigating agency, a neighboring police agency, investigates. Body camera footage will not be released, and public officials will decline to comment, citing an ongoing investigation. At some point, the neighboring police agency will quietly release a report stating that the officer involved in the shooting did nothing wrong. There’s usually very little information about whether policies were broken or if the situation could have been handled differently for a better outcome.

That’s been the standard for every police shooting in recent memory.

This editorial board has taken issue before with silence on police shootings. Police agencies and public officials should release more details about shootings to at least assuage public concerns and answer basic questions. Secrecy breeds suspicion.

In the case of the fatal police shooting of Payton Wasson, 22, it took police a full week to release basic information and answer questions from the public. An officer shot Wasson in the head in late June, according to Boise police. His death prompted the community to protest and call for an end to police violence and greater accountability.

It’s now been more than a month since the shooting, and the public still has no more information about what happened.

For serious incidents such as police shootings, the city of Boise’s Office of Police Accountability can conduct its own investigation or review them later, according to previous reporting. In the absence of a full-time director, the office’s interim director plans to audit other critical incident investigations.

This does not instill a lot of confidence.

Because of the turmoil with its former director, the restructured Boise Office of Police Accountability has not really had a chance to prove that it’s working well. This editorial board endorsed the idea in concept, so long as it led to increased transparency and accountability. So far, we have not been impressed.

Many in the community already have a distrust of a process in which police agencies police their own.

“Police cannot police themselves,” Stan Banach told the Star City Council in July. “You will never cross that thin blue line.”

Banach is a local retired police officer whose son was shot and killed by police in Star last year. Instead of a critical incident task force composed of another police agency, Banach suggested a citizens review board made up of retired officers, attorneys and prosecutors from other states and at least one mental health professional, according to previous Idaho Statesman reporting.

We’re not convinced that’s the way to go, but it’s worth considering as an alternative to the way we’re doing things now.

The city of Boise previously had a successful and popular ombudsman who did an excellent job of investigating complaints and critical incidents. That office instilled confidence that someone was minding the store objectively and transparently. Perhaps it’s time to bring back that position.

If you think this is a small problem, it’s not.

This is the sixth police shooting that the Boise Police Department has been involved in this year and the second one in the past week. In the past five weeks, the Boise Police Department has fatally shot two people, including Wasson.

The department has been involved in a total of three fatal shootings this year. Last year, the Boise Police Department was involved in three shootings, but none of them were fatal.

According to The Washington Post’s police shooting database, Idaho police officers have killed 71 people since 2015. Twelve shootings were in Boise, four were in Meridian, four were in Nampa and four were in Caldwell. After Thursday’s shooting, add another to the list.

Police agencies and the Ada County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office keep basic details and body camera footage a secret, keeping the public in the dark for far too long.

Even when a report is released, no one is conducting an independent investigation. We’re not automatically concluding that there is wrongdoing or that critical incident task forces are necessarily covering up wrongdoing.

However, without independence and timely information, the public is left wondering.

We need more transparency and accountability when it comes to the growing problem of police shootings in the Treasure Valley.