BOISE, Idaho — This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press.
When Boise police officers exchanged gunfire with and killed an armed man in the North End this summer, the Ada County Critical Incident Task Force stepped in.
The same thing happened when a Kuna police chase led to a fatal car crash last year. The task force (CITF) conducts a criminal investigation of the officers involved in incidents in which force is used and can, or does, lead to death or serious injury.
The officers under investigation are placed on leave, but eventually return to work — sometimes while they’re still being investigated.
Public records obtained by the Idaho Press show that 10 Boise police officers and three Garden City police officers are actively working while under a CITF investigation. Further investigating found that this falls in line with many local police department policies.
“An officer has a job to do. He has performed his job and in the course of those duties has deployed deadly force, which is one of the things that we task our police officers with doing,” Boise Police Chief Ron Winegar told the Idaho Press. “Unless we have something that indicates the officer did something wrong … it wouldn’t be prudent, it wouldn’t be fair to take that officer and remove them from their profession.”
The Boise Police Department’s policy says that any officer involved in a critical incident is placed on administrative leave for 40 hours — a normal work week — Winegar said. The officer is required to see a mental health professional during that time and is required to have a follow-up visit within 30 days. The policy allows for up to an additional 40 hours if the officer needs or requests the time off.
Desk duty or modified duty is an option for officers who are being investigated, Winegar said, but it would be provided only if there’s a reason to modify someone’s duty — similar to how an officer would come back to work normally unless there was something that indicates the officer did something wrong.
There is not a test to see if the officer is mentally fit to come back, Winegar said, unless there’s reason to believe someone isn’t OK to come back.
“Everybody has rights, including police officers,” Winegar said. “It would not be the wise thing to do emotionally for officers involved (to not let them return to work). We know that it is beneficial to give them a short period of time to decompress.”
Meridian’s policy is similar — if an officer is in a critical incident, they are put on leave for a minimum of three days and are required to see a counselor. The officer can be given extended leave and receive any counseling they need or want, a spokesperson said.
The Meridian Police Department said in a records request that none of its officers are currently under a Critical Incident Task Force investigation. Both Meridian and Boise’s police departments said neither department is currently leading any investigations — Meridian said all of its critical incident investigations have been forwarded to prosecutors for review. CITF investigations are performed by police agencies that didn’t have an officer involved in the incident being looked into, eliminating some potential conflicts of interest.
Garden City’s officers go on leave for a minimum of three days, but can take more than that, Garden City Police Chief Cory Stambaugh said. At the same time, Garden City will do an internal review to make sure the officer acted within policy.
Garden City Police said the department was leading two critical incident investigations.
And it’s worth noting that while Garden City employs 27 officers, the city of Boise employs around 300 officers — making the 10 officers who are working while under investigation a small percentage of the total.
“Three days has always been the standard practice in order to try to figure out a time to get them in to see a psychologist or a psychiatrist just to do a mental health check on them,” Stambaugh said. “You get a lot of adrenaline dump and stuff in a pretty short time, and we just want to make sure that they’re OK.”
Police are also granted the presumption of innocence and performing within policy, said Cody Jorgensen, Boise State University associate professor of criminal justice.
“They really can’t take them off the job unless the investigation has concluded and found serious wrongdoing in terms of serious policy violation or law breaking or something along those lines,” Jorgensen said. “It’s hard to say whether they should or should not be working.”
Jorgensen said that officers going to counseling after a critical incident is a good thing. When it comes to the Critical Incident Task Force, Jorgensen said it’s a better way to hold law enforcement accountable than how policing used to be.
“For the longest time the police agency itself would investigate itself and then, lo and behold, find that it did nothing wrong,” Jorgensen said. “The criticism is that policing is policing, policing is a brotherhood … the actions taken are being viewed from a policing lens.”
But Winegar, Boise’s police chief, said there aren’t better alternatives.
“These are detectives with many years of experience and training. And if I just grabbed somebody off the street and say, ‘hey, here, go investigate this shooting incident,’ they would have no idea where to start or what to do,’” Winegar said. “We simply preserve the evidence, investigate the situation, and do so professionally and thoroughly.”
This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press, read more on IdahoPress.com.
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