Fatal police shootings in Boise spur questions about department’s lethal force policy

When police respond to reports of criminal activity, officers are entrusted with deciding whether the situation warrants deadly force, but must follow a fixed set of rules that allow them to use their duty weapons.

In the wake of Boise police fatally shooting a second suspect in just over a month — the fourth and fifth shootings by the city’s force this year — those use-of-force guidelines are facing scrutiny. Each incident remains under investigation by outside police agencies to review whether the officers who fired their guns at the suspects were justified in their actions and followed proper procedures.

On Wednesday night, police shot and killed Macey Juker, 28, of Boise, who fired a rifle at officers after they responded to the city’s North End neighborhood on reports of a person who was armed, police said. That incident followed one downtown in the early morning hours of June 24, when the department said an officer shot Payton Wasson, 22, of Nampa, after police observed him with a gun in his hand as he fled on foot.

Per standard protocol, each police shooting launches a Critical Incident Task Force investigation. The Garden City Police Department is leading the review of the latest incident, while the Ada County Sheriff’s Office is examining the shooting of Wasson, who died a day later in the hospital from a gunshot wound to the head, according to the Ada County Coroner’s Office.

The Boise Police Department also performs its own internal investigation of shootings that involve its officers.

After a shooting — namely when officers resolve to use force that ends someone’s life — concern arises within the community. That response is both expected and understandable, said retired Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney, who now works as a national law enforcement consultant.

“With any critical incident, there are always questions that the community deserves to have answered,” Raney told the Idaho Statesman in a phone interview. “While it is difficult to wait for those answers, the important thing to focus on when these (investigations) are complete is that law enforcement has been objective and done a thorough job.”

When an officer is permitted to fire their weapon is legally well established and relatively straightforward, he said.

The Boise Police Department procedures manual states that an officer shall not fire their gun as a warning. Nor are police permitted to shoot when doing so may “unreasonably endanger” people who are not involved in the alleged crime.

Outside of firearms training and preventing an animal from suffering further, the policy manual allows a sworn officer to fire their weapon while on duty only in two circumstances: to protect themselves or others from imminent danger, including death or serious injury; and to help capture someone suspected of a felony whose escape would pose a “significant threat” to police or the public.

The same guidance applies to police shooting at a moving vehicle. An officer may do so only when they have an “objectively reasonable belief” that a suspect represents a continuing threat of death or serious injury to police or others, or when the officer has “no reasonable alternative course of action,” according to Boise’s policy manual.

“Either an officer reasonably perceived that — a threat to life or safety that caused them to shoot — or, if they didn’t, it’s not a good shooting,” Raney said.

Four shots fired, three hit suspect, friend says

Details about the shooting in the 700 block of N. 20th Street so far remain scant. Six officers fired their weapons at Juker, who died of multiple gunshot wounds in a shootout. Neighbors told the Statesman they had seen the man brandishing a rifle in the street.

Police also have released limited information about the June 24 incident that led to Wasson’s death. Officer Chance Feldner, who has served 8 1/2 years with the Boise Police Department, shot Wasson while investigating a vehicle downtown near 5th and Main streets that officers suspected was involved in gang activity and/or narcotics sales, police said.

A second man, Mario Garza, 26, of Kuna, was arrested in the incident for allegedly having fentanyl pills. He is charged with felony possession of a controlled substance and remains in custody at the Ada County Jail.

Garza declined to answer questions about the incident in a video interview from the jail with the Statesman. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for Thursday morning.

A third person involved that night was released at the scene, Boise police have said. Jordan Smith, 26, of Caldwell — who identified herself to the Statesman as Garza’s girlfriend — has since stepped forward and said she was there at the time of the shooting.

As Smith, Garza and Wasson walked downtown, Smith said that five unmarked police vehicles pulled up shortly after 2:10 a.m. and that officers already had their guns drawn. Wasson took off running as police ordered him to stop and put his hands up, but he never turned around, she said.

Smith said she distinctly recalled hearing four gunshots, and she said three of them struck Wasson from about 25 yards away. Smith never saw Wasson with a gun that night, she said.

“I watched one of my really good friends just get shot in the head three times,” Smith said by phone. “I just don’t see a reason why Boise police even shot him, because he wasn’t a threat to them. It was really, honestly uncalled for.”

A firearm was found next to Wasson, near 5th and Idaho streets, police said.

Wasson’s mother, Marah Wasson, said in a Facebook post after her son’s death that police shot him in the back of the head.

“The bullet was lodged in the front of his head still, no surgery was possible,” she wrote. “Your officer murdered my son. My children’s brother. He was only 22. He didn’t deserve this.”

Citing the ongoing CITF investigation, Boise police spokesperson Haley Williams has declined to answer questions from the Statesman about how many rounds Feldner fired from his gun, as well as where and how many times Wasson was struck.

“Anytime somebody is shot in the back or shot in the head, everybody immediately has some skepticism about that,” Raney said. “I’ve never seen an officer who was a good enough shot to hit somebody in the head on the run. It’s not the way law enforcement is taught, which is to shoot at center mass. … So it’s an unfortunate circumstance and we’ll have to see what happens” with the investigation.

‘A very stacked system’

T. Greg Doucette is a First Amendment attorney who practices law in North Carolina. He’s gained a national following from his efforts over the past 15 years to document cases of police misconduct with a crowdsourced video archive on social media.

Based on his prior experience as a civil litigator and criminal defense attorney, Doucette said he’s cynical about the ability of communities across the nation to address upward trends in police use-of-force incidents, including officer shootings. The combination of legal precedents, state laws and growing law enforcement budgets work to protect officers even if they have shown to have engaged in wrongdoing, he said, which limits the capacity to fix such deep-seated problems.

“It’s a very stacked system from a legal standpoint, and it makes it exceptionally hard to hold bad police officers accountable,” Doucette said in a phone interview. “It would take a tremendous amount of leadership to do a course correction, and the political will has to be there to do it, and I don’t have any faith in our politicians to do it.”

Boise Mayor Lauren McLean and Boise Police Chief Ron Winegar each called Wasson’s shooting death “a tragedy.”

“Payton Wasson’s death is a tragedy, and his family is grieving a world-shattering loss,” McLean said in a post on Twitter. “I stand with Chief Winegar’s commitment to pursuing urgent and appropriate accountability, and know our community expects nothing less.”

Doucette commended police departments that have a policy of handing investigations into shooting incidents over to outside law enforcement agencies to review whether officers who fired their weapons at suspects were in the right. Still, such investigations remain flawed, he said, because they almost always give the benefit of the doubt to the officer.

In addition, Doucette said, the frequency of police shootings has left communities disengaged, despite the very real consequence of the loss of people’s lives at the hands of officers sworn to protect and serve citizens.

“There will be some public outrage, then there will be another shooting, and then we all move on,” Doucette said. “The public’s natural tendency is to look away and the problem will take care of itself, but the public needs to stay informed, stay vigilant and demand change.”

Boise’s first police shooting this year happened in early January, when Sgt. Kirk Rush shot a 48-year-old Boise man who was walking on the Interstate 184 Connector. The man ignored commands, police said, and produced a weapon they didn’t identify, which led the 18-year member of Boise police to fire his gun.

The shooting was the second in which Rush was involved in a seven-month span. The man he shot was treated at an area hospital for injuries that were not life-threatening and charged with one count of felony aggravated assault with a felony enhancement for use of a firearm or deadly weapon.

Later in January, another police shooting took place in a parking lot of the Meridian Crossroads mall along Fairview Avenue in West Boise. As police tried to take into custody a 32-year-old man who was a wanted fugitive by removing him from a car, he pulled out a firearm, police said, and was shot and killed by Officer Kip Paporello. For Paporello, who has 23 years with Boise police, the incident was his second shooting in less than three months, according to prior Statesman reporting.

The year’s third shooting that involved Boise police took place in March. Officer Nicholas Quintana, who has five years in law enforcement and joined the department in January, and an unnamed Ada County sheriff’s deputy each shot at a 22-year-old man after he “pointed and appeared to discharge” a firearm at the officers, Boise police said. At the scene, police recovered a BB gun that Winegar said “looked very, very real,” the Statesman previously reported.

The suspect, Gavin Donithorne, was struck at least once in the shooting and taken to an area hospital. He was charged with two counts of felony aggravated assault on a police officer and one count of felony eluding.

None of the CITF reports from the three police shootings has been completed in 2023.

Critics argue that in reports like these, which contain reviews of officers’ split-second decisions, suspects with criminal backgrounds tend to receive less consideration over whether police entered a situation more prone to use force.

In Wasson’s case, he had a criminal history that began when he was a minor and last entailed an incident in 2021, according to court records. He had juvenile drug charges and a case in which he pleaded guilty to felony fleeing or attempting to elude a police officer in a motor vehicle, and received probation.

In July 2019, Wasson violated his probation and a judge imposed up to a three-year prison sentence, court records showed. Then, in February 2021, Meridian police tried to arrest Wasson on a felony warrant and he fled on foot when officers approached him in an apartment complex parking lot. After pleading guilty to disturbing the peace, Wasson received a 30-day jail sentence.

Garza also has three prior felony convictions, and was sentenced to at least six years in prison after he and another man began shooting at each other in a Nampa Walmart parking lot in 2016. As a result of their respective backgrounds as convicted felons, neither Garza nor Wasson was permitted to possess a gun.

Police have not said whether they began their investigation into the suspicious vehicle with knowledge of its connections to Garza or Wasson, or of their individual histories with law enforcement and the judicial system.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho continues to demand answers about the month-old fatal incident, irrespective of Wasson’s background.

“The family of this young man ... and the public deserve to know if the officer or officers (BPD has not let the public know how many officers responded to the scene) believed they were in imminent danger of death or serious injury, which is the criteria for discharging a firearm in the line of duty under Idaho code,” Leo Morales, executive director of the ACLU of Idaho, said in a statement to the Statesman.

“While the young man did have a criminal history — including a felony that would have meant he legally could not possess a gun — it’s not yet clear if the police knew who they were investigating when the officer fired his weapon.”

Idaho Statesman reporting intern Noble Brigham contributed.