What do you think of this Idaho town’s new OIS protocol?

The point of the exercise was to assure the public that officers were conducting a thorough and fair investigation

April 15, 2011 02:21 AM

By Sven Berg
Idaho Falls Post Register

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho — Minutes after Idaho Falls police officers shot and killed Nicholas Barker, Capt. Ken Brown invoked a 16-page document that, for the next two weeks, would govern the work of detectives from all over eastern Idaho.

It was the first time the year-old document, “Eastern Idaho Critical Incident Protocol,” had been used. Signed by dozens of sheriffs, chiefs of police and other public figures from around the region, it established a method for investigating officer-involved incidents such as the one that led to Barker’s death.

Following the protocol, Brown asked a neutral agency - in this case, the Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office - to lead the investigation.

Officers from at least nine different agencies between Power County and Rexburg were called in. An evidence custodian was appointed. Some of the detectives were assigned the duty of accompanying the three officers who fired on Barker and making sure they didn’t talk to each other.

The point of the exercise was to assure the public that officers were conducting a thorough and fair investigation, Idaho Falls Police Chief Steve Roos said.

As head of the department’s detectives, Brown was responsible for invoking the critical-incident protocol, Roos said, adding he would have done the same thing.

“We would be foolish not to,” he said. “I’ve always felt on anything like this that we definitely need someone from outside the agency.”

The practice of bringing in neutral investigators to handle all sorts of legal issues is not new. Law enforcement agencies routinely ask for outside help in disputes between two different agencies or when their officers have played a role in deaths or other serious incidents.

Occasionally, the heads of law enforcement agencies choose to investigate incidents involving their own officers. It’s a tricky path to walk, one that often leads to accusations of cover-ups and conflicts of interest.

“I just want the public’s confidence that we’re doing it right and there’s no chance of that perceived favoritism,” Roos said.

In the past, eastern Idaho sheriff’s offices and police departments have relied on a multicounty agreement for handling investigations of officer-involved incidents. But the Barker shooting was the first time the critical-incident protocol had been used.

Besides encouraging a clean investigation, the protocol vastly increased the resources at detectives’ disposal, said James Foster, one of the Bonneville sheriff’s deputies assigned to the Barker shooting. With 24 detectives assigned to the incident, the greatest potential problem was confusion stemming from poor communication, Foster said.

But in this case, he said, “We basically had really good communication with all of the officers.”

Perhaps most importantly, the protocol provided structure for how the investigation would unfold. With that in place, Foster said, there was less wondering about what steps to take next.

The protocol’s framework helped maintain the investigation’s transparency, Bonneville County Prosecutor Bruce Pickett said.

“If you have a process in place, it takes out the personality,” he said. “You make sure that any investigation is transparent and that the people that work together, you don’t want there to be any issues with a friend investigating their fellow officer.”

Two weeks after Barker’s death, detectives completed the investigation of the shooting. They filed all of their findings with Pickett, who ruled the shooting was justified.

Since then, in reviews of their performance, officers have concluded the investigation went well. Idaho Falls police spokesman Phil Grimes said concerns that came up were minor.

Both Pickett and Foster said their offices could have done a better job of keeping the public informed about what had happened and how the investigation was progressing.

“There was certainly information that could have been released earlier,” Pickett said. “Next time, we’ll try to do it better.”