Boise mayor has chance to do things the right way in hiring next police chief | Opinion

The announced retirement of Boise Police Chief Ron Winegar provides the first real test of Boise Mayor Lauren McLean’s second term in office.

The city now will be seeking its fourth police chief in as many years.

This is her chance to fulfill her campaign promise, to learn from past mistakes and correct them moving forward. McLean has had missteps with her hiring practices in the past.

The first was when she hired Mark Niemeyer as fire chief. There’s nothing wrong with Niemeyer, and his tenure appears to be a good one so far. However, Niemeyer wasn’t even an announced candidate for the job, let alone a finalist, even though there had been a thorough search and selection process that yielded two finalists. Instead, McLean unilaterally called him up and offered him the job.

The hiring of former Police Chief Ryan Lee did not end well. McLean asked Lee to resign after rank-and-file complaints about his management style and practices came to light. Winegar, who was turned down for the job earlier in favor of Lee, came out of retirement in 2022 to fill Lee’s position on an interim basis. The interim label was removed last year, during an election year, and plans to find a permanent chief were canceled. Winegar’s retirement announcement comes just 10 months after being named chief.

The Office of Police Accountability’s Jesus Jara’s tenure was a disaster and ended after less than two years in a wrongful termination lawsuit against the city.

The hiring of the current Office of Police Accountability director was less than transparent, as the Idaho Statesman discovered after the fact that one of the finalists for the job had turned the city down and removed herself from consideration.

It was these types of management missteps that gave this editorial board pause when considering endorsing McLean for a second term in office. While we gave her the endorsement, it came with a hope that a second term would see fewer missteps like this. So here is what this board would like to see happen this time:

Above all, any search for Boise’s next police chief needs to be transparent.

McLean should lay out the parameters of the search and define the qualifications.

We hope that it will be a national search, and the local team that evaluates the candidates should be inclusive, meaning it includes people outside McLean’s inner circle.

The public should be included as well, particularly when the finalists are selected.

As for our wish list, Boise’s next police chief will need to recognize the need for community policing while also recognizing that Boise is becoming a bigger city with some big-city problems. Striking that balance will be vital.

Boise’s next police chief will have to be committed to rebuilding trust not only in the community, but also within the force.

Boise’s next police chief will need to be thoroughly vetted. The last thing we need is a chief with a blemish in their past.

Finally, we want Boise’s next police chief to be committed to transparency. Too often over the past four years, we’ve seen vague, confusing, even misleading press releases and statements from the police department. City and police officials have been too slow to comment on critical incidents, particularly police shootings. Body-worn camera footage has been withheld from the public when it comes to the Boise Police Department, while other police departments across the country and even within Idaho have released that footage.

We want to see a police chief who is committed to providing the public with the information it needs to maintain trust in the department.

This may seem like a tall order.

But with an open and thorough search and interview process, we believe Boise can fill that order.

Boise residents deserve nothing less.

Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members Mary Rohlfing and Patricia Nilsson.