Former sheriff: Improving, not defunding, law enforcement in Idaho

During the 1990s, law enforcement received billions of dollars to help fund a concept you’ve probably heard of called community-oriented policing. The goal was to get our law enforcement officers out of their cars, interacting with people and engaging them in public safety solutions. While poorly administered, the concepts were spot on.

Then came 9/11. The vast majority of federal funding shifted from “get to know your community” to “be prepared to kill a terrorist.” From there we reacted to the evolving threats of active shooters, and most of the federal money and equipment for the past 19 years has been focused on preparedness rather than connectedness. We got what we paid for – a disconnect with the human side of policing.

When I retired as your Ada County sheriff five years ago, I continued my efforts to improve law enforcement. In those years, I have worked privately and for the Department of Justice, focused on preventing in-custody deaths and helping agencies adopt constitutional standards for their use of force. This has given me a broad perspective on what is happening nationally and how lucky we are to be in Idaho. We have things we need to improve, though.

Let me be clear. Law enforcement in Idaho is not broken and by no means should it be “defunded.” However, there are things we need to do to make our state, and the people who protect it, better. We are a rural state and lack the resources that many other states have. That makes us less bureaucratic, but it also has created a law enforcement system with a wide gap between the haves and have-nots. Urban agencies tend to be better funded and more likely to be career choice agencies, where rural agencies often lack the resources to even keep up with the basic training topics. We need similar training, and equal accountability, in every agency in Idaho whether they employ one or 500 officers.

First, we need to hire the right people. Many agencies in Idaho lack the resources to do a good background check, let alone a polygraph and psychological test. Even today, law enforcement officers often get hired because they seem like they will be a good fit. We need to screen out those candidates who are racist or otherwise don’t have the moral character to be good cops. We need chiefs and sheriffs to come together and, through the Peace Officers Standards and Training (POST) Council, establish more rigorous hiring standards that, as a minimum, include a thorough background investigation on every person who is to become a law enforcement officer.

A person can be a law enforcement officer in Idaho for up to a year before going to the academy. That means they have the authority to arrest, use force and even take a life under the authority of law before they go through the academy. Idaho is one of the few states that still allows this and it should change. Currently, small jurisdictions don’t want to spend the money sending someone to the academy until they know if they will be a good fit and stay. A better hiring process would improve the chances of that, but we should make sure all officers are trained before they hit the street.

We need better in-service training for small agencies. Again, the urban agencies generally have good training because they have resources. However, the vast majority of the agencies in Idaho are not urban. They are often one to 10 people, which means one person on per shift at best. Those officers receive training in the academy, but then little more, especially on difficult subjects like the use of force. The agencies don’t have the money to send people to training and, if they did, it would be one or two rather than the whole agency. I’ve seen Idaho officers who have been on the job for many years but have not had any meaningful use of force training since they graduated the academy.

We need a more robust process that requires agencies to report misconduct to POST. While there is currently a requirement to report, there is no teeth in it. So, when an officer is being terminated for misconduct, there is often a negotiation that they will resign in exchange for the agency not requesting a decertification investigation that may prevent the person from being hired somewhere else. That is good for the city or county’s liability management because there won’t be a wrongful termination claim, but bad for us who need the best out there on the street. We need to know why that officer was terminated and, if for cause, prevent them from unknowingly being hired at the next agency down the road.

DATA! How many officer-involved deaths have there been in the state of Idaho? How many were shootings? How many were from another use of force? How many were ruled justified? As a state, we have no idea. We have a fledgling system for reporting force, but it is too inconsistent to be of value. How can we prevent future critical incidents if we don’t understand what the gaps in training are? Every business has a quality improvement process, but Idaho has no mechanism to understand why officer-involved shootings happen and how they may have been prevented. This must change.

I can assure you that, as a whole, Idaho’s law enforcement officers are good people. That’s where it all starts. But we need to help those good people develop the skills and knowledge they need. Skills, like how to react to someone with a knife, or how to confront a protester, only comes from understanding the law and practicing both proper force and proper deescalation techniques. Idaho should assess the training gaps between urban and rural agencies, develop plans to close those gaps and then fund training for the knowledge and skills that will help save lives. It may be yours they save.