We still have little information about Boise police shooting. What’s taking so long? | Opinion
What happened the night of June 24, when Payton Wasson, 22, was shot in the head and killed by Boise police?
We still don’t really know, even though it’s been more than five months since the shooting in the early morning hours in downtown Boise.
New eyewitness accounts from people interviewed by the Idaho Statesman suggest Wasson was running away from police and was not pointing a gun at police. Police accounts state Wasson had a gun and posed a threat.
What’s the truth?
Police body-camera footage would go a long way toward clearing up any confusion. But the city of Boise and the Boise Police Department, under apparent orders from Ada County Prosecuting Attorney Jan Bennetts, won’t release the footage. Not even Wasson’s family has had a chance to look at the body-cam or dash-cam footage, according to the family’s attorneys. No one will release the Critical Incident Task Force report detailing what happened and why, either.
One of the reasons they give for concealing the report is that releasing any details would hinder an ongoing investigation. The problem with that excuse: The investigation was completed in August. That’s according to Patrick Orr, spokesperson for the Ada County Sheriff’s Office, which handled the investigation.
How can releasing details hinder an investigation that’s already complete?
Granted, the report has been forwarded to Twin Falls Prosecuting Attorney Grant Loebs, someone who is not known to find fault with any action of a police officer, for consideration of possible wrongdoing. But by the time a Critical Incident Task Force report makes it into a prosecuting attorney’s hands, police have already completed their investigated.
It seems more likely that city officials, police officials and the prosecuting attorney simply want to drag their feet to give the incident more time to cool off before telling the public what really happened. In the meantime, the public is left to wonder what happened, filling a vacuum with speculation and suspicion.
As we’ve said before, secrecy breeds suspicion.
“Boise can’t divorce itself from the rest of the country,” former Boise police ombudsman Pierce Murphy told the Statesman in a phone interview. “It’s now publicly expected that within a reasonable amount of time — sometimes it’s just days, oftentimes it’s weeks — after a fatal officer-involved shooting, or any sort of use of force that raises public questions, that that video footage is going to be released.”
We’re neither suggesting that the Boise police officer who shot and killed Wasson did anything criminal, nor are we suggesting that he even violated proper procedures and protocols. But could it have been handled differently? Could there have been a better way?
This incident will be a key test for Nicole McKay, the new director of the Office of Police Accountability, who was appointed to the position in August. Will she act independently? Will she thoroughly review the incident, conduct her own interviews and, if necessary, recommend handling the situation differently?
In the meantime, without the report or the camera footage, the public simply doesn’t know what happened that night.
And the longer officials wait to release information that should have been released weeks ago, the more suspicions and mistrust grow.
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.
