Boise moves to revamp its police oversight office. Not everyone is happy about it.

Boise is looking to overhaul its Office of Police Oversight in an attempt to raise its accessibility, officials say, but the office’s current director calls the changes “disappointing.”

Officials are looking to take the present model, which includes a part-time director, and replace it with an Office of Police Accountability, which would have a larger public profile and a full-time director, according to a presentation given by Courtney Washburn — Mayor Lauren McLean’s chief of staff — to the Boise City Council last week.

The goal, members of the council said, would be to have a clear place to send residents who come with complaints about a police officer or incident.

“We should be able to send them to an office where we have confidence that that complaint is going to be fully investigated and that our constituents are going to be taken care of,” Council Member Holli Woodings said during the meeting last week.

Natalie Camacho Mendoza, the director of the office and a local lawyer, told the Statesman last week that in its current form, the office is “considered one of the best.” Other cities often reach out to ask about Boise’s model, she said.

Boise is the only city in the state with an independent oversight body, Camacho Mendoza noted. The Shoshone-Bannock tribe has a citizen commission in place, she said, but it operates slightly differently.

“As a longtime advocate for the Latino community and an advocate for communities of color, I feel like the model we have currently has been pretty effective for over 22 years,” she said. The office is “the best of both worlds,” she said, combining independent investigation with unrestricted audit authority.

Camacho Mendoza said that she’s disappointed to see it be “dismantled” and that the office does more than people realize.

Her team conducts independent investigations, gives recommendations on policies and procedures, and provides training, among many other things, she said. The work is split between Camacho Mendoza and two investigators. The team also included an analyst, but that person resigned after they learned the office would be overhauled, Camacho Mendoza said.

Camacho Mendoza said she also does “targeted outreach” to keep a pulse on what people think about policing, “so that I can be a bridge between community and the police department.” That includes connecting with people not always included in such conversations, she said.

“I have to say, as a person of color, it was particularly painful to hear during the George Floyd murder trial” that her director job would go away if the office was replaced, Camacho Mendoza said. She said she was told she could apply for the full-time role.

Floyd was the Minneapolis man who died last year while being pinned to the ground by a police officer. Derek Chauvin, who is no longer a member of that department, was convicted of murder and manslaughter Tuesday by a jury in Floyd’s death.

During her presentation, Washburn said that people in Boise have been unsure what to do if they have a complaint against a police officer. With a part-time director but a big workload, the Office of Police Oversight’s focus “was a bit taken away from investigations and complaints,” Washburn said.

The city hopes to address that by bringing in someone to do the job full time. The plan, Washburn said, would be to better advertise the office in places where there might be complaints, including schools that have officers.

The council voted Tuesday to approve the first reading of an ordinance that would replace the current setup with the Office of Police Accountability.

Kimberly Smith, a city attorney, wrote in a memo to the council and mayor that the new language in city code “eliminates redundancies in investigations, identifies cases requiring mandatory auditing, requires mandatory independent review of critical incidents, and sets forth requirements for transparency and reporting.”

The new Office of Police Accountability would become official after the ordinance is read for a third time before the council. Seth Ogilvie, McLean’s spokesperson, said Wednesday that third reading likely wouldn’t come before a new director is in place.