BOISE, Idaho — This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press.
Boise's Office of Police Accountability in the next two months will start releasing several reports on officer incidents from 2022 and 2023.
Nicole McKay, Office of Police Accountability Director, gave her semi-annual report to the Boise City Council on Tuesday. When she started in the role in September 2023, there was a backlog of incidents to review. Now there will be three reports released in March and two in April.
“Your charge to this office has been clear: Establish best practices for greater transparency and accountability within our policing and meaningfully engage with the community,” McKay told the council.
McKay said the office has changed its critical incident report format to include links to body-camera video footage, any contributing and mitigating factors that may have affected the incident (such as a person not following officer instructions or the officer’s thought process) and if there was a policy violation.
“We are providing transparency, I believe, for the first time, in what the Boise Police Department is finding and reporting,” McKay said.
She said her ultimate goal is to find trends in these incidents, if there are any.
There are four other incidents under review by the Critical Incident Task Force or Boise Police - three from 2023 and one from 2024. The task force investigates criminality of "officer-involved incidents that involve serious injury, death, or potential of serious injury or death as a result of use-of-force," and Boise Police looks into department policy violations.
“To my knowledge, there has never been an officer charged in Boise City Police for a shooting,” McKay said.
McKay said she’s been meeting with community members like Rabbi Dan Fink, the Idaho Black History Museum, the Boise School District and the Downtown Boise Association.
In the fall, McKay will provide a full report, including auditing, analysis and recommendations. The auditing part will focus on citizen complaints, the office of internal affairs, BPD actions, BPD data and anything the Boise Police Chief wants audited.
“I am really looking forward to and hoping that with the information that we glean from those functions, I can bring you back something meaningful that you can really understand how we are approaching policing and where we are succeeding and where we could use some additional work focus and resources,” McKay said.
The data collection and analysis will help allocate resources, look at program funding and identify patterns in crime and policing resources.
In the fall, McKay will provide recommendations to the city council based on the audits and investigations as well as collaboration with BPD, she said.
Councilmember Jimmy Hallyburton asked for the office to take a look at how many incidents have a discernible mental health component.
“That's one of the things that I think there's probably a shared interest here and we're trying to figure out like, is there something that's growing? Staying the same?” Hallyburton said.
Council President Colin Nash said the status quo seems to be that police officers were acting within the law.
“But I think there's a great deal of overlap between what is legal and what is preventable or avoidable,” Nash said. “Demonstrating we understand that BPD is working on continuous improvement, especially around these critical incidents … I think that's exactly the kind of transparency that we need.”
This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press, read more on IdahoPress.com.
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