May 1, 2007 Open Mike for Southeast Idaho Government Workers
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We have previously published “open mike”-style discussion threads specifically for Idaho Falls city employees, and quality comments always seemed to come through.
This month we will try expanding the “open mike” idea to any government employees in southeast Idaho, city workers in any city, county workers in any county, even state or federal government employees anywhere in our neck of the woods.
Hopefully your organization works in such a way that you can adequately address your workplace concerns through your normal available channels.
Unfortunately, we all know this is not always the case. Hence, this forum is open for government workers who feel issues important to the public are not being adequately addressed by their workplace channels.
For instance, some Bonneville County courthouse employees witnessed inappropriate behaviors by the infamous Kimball Mason. Even though they had valid concerns about his workplace conduct, they felt intimidated with his experience and stature, and that stone did not get turned over as soon as it should have.
Remember, you may post comments anonymously here, and you can get advice from others here on what to try. If it is a really serious issue, bear in mind that local news media check here often and may investigate the matter further.
So what’s shaking in our southeast Idaho governments?
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Comments
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0 Hey, how about posting some case numbers or something where we can look these up and get copies downtown….I agree with your concern. When the City Police are involved in a crash, they can’t investigate their own crash…they HAVE to get an outside agency like the Sheriff or State Police to do the report….shouldn’t be any different here and it is not hard to call in another officer to take the report!
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0 0 I know that some police database systems have a way to “hide” reports. I can’t name the specific PD, but they with others in Idaho use quite a popular system in the west for record retrieval and access. I do not know what IFPD uses.
For instance, all within a year or so, we had the Chief’s nephew, the Captain’s 2 sons, and a few patrol officers on their personal time all wind up with chargeable offenses, but they didn’t get charged. Additionally, the specific report was “hidden” with a password, so when the public came in and wanted the report according to Idaho Public Records Law, it didn’t “exist”. Interesting. The hide feature was good for some reasons but not for these IMO.
If post #1 is true, it happens in PD’s all over the U.S. and is rather the norm sometimes. Wrong, right? Debatable. We all have had jobs where favors are passed along, information is shared that probably shouldn’t be, and people get off for one reason or another. Reminds me of many school principals who doles out punishment irregularly for the same offense. Some for good reasons, some not.
I wanted to mention my experience in case there are no reports or info available. Officer discretion is probably a little more lenient when a fellow officer or his/her family is involved, right or wrong. We had a captain who was caught DUI driving several times and given a “courtesy” ride home each time by fellow agencies.
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Three under the radar incidents in the last month with the IFPD that raise a questionable practice by the IFPD. All were situations where an IFPD member or family member could have been criminally charged and were investigated by other IFPD officers. I don’t pretend to know enough about any of the cases to say that anyone should have been charged but I think anyone can see the conflict of interest. I also think most IFPD officers, at least the ones I heard about this from, would agree and say that an outside agency should have investigated due to the conflict of interest and potential for future retaliation if things don’t go the way the involved officer likes. But the Chief of police disagrees.
1. An IFPD officer negligiently left his gun out where his young child could find it. The child then shot himself in the hand. Some woman here in town is currently on trial for leaving a burning marijuana pipe out where it could start a fire and it ended up killing her son. Cases seem similar in principle to me.
2. IFPD responded to a domestic disturbance between an IFPD officer and his wife. Either the husband or wife was demanding the other be arrested but no one was. Perhaps no one should have been but I’d think it should have been an outside agency deciding that.
3. IFPD responded to another domestic involving an IFPD officer, his wife, and his ex wife during a custody dispute. Allegations were made that the current wife attacked the ex wife and abused one of the kids. No one was arrested. The current wife is also a police officer for the sheriff’s department apparently. From what I hear there were definite grounds to charge the new wife but she wasn’t charged.
It seems to me that every effort should be made to ensure an impartial investigation when an officer or family member is involved. I can’t see that the IFPD did this in any of these cases.