New Boise police accountability report justifies shooting, questions officers’ approach

A newly released Office of Police Accountability report called a deadly Boise police shooting in January 2023 justified, but it also had several recommendations for what officers should have done differently leading up to the incident.

Eli Nash, 32, was on parole for crimes involving possession of sexually exploitative child material and was under investigation by the Boise Police Department over allegations that he sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl, the Idaho Statesman previously reported.

Police began looking for him in November 2022 after he fled parole supervision and failed to register as a sex offender. Law enforcement grew more concerned after learning that Nash may have been dating a woman with a young child, according to the report.

“Because of the nature of Mr. Nash’s previous offenses, officers were concerned that any child to whom he had access was potentially in danger and may already be a victim of sexual assault,” the city agency wrote in the report, released Tuesday.

Nash pulled out a gun and was shot by police while in the back seat of his vehicle in a Texas Roadhouse parking lot along Fairview Avenue across from The Village at Meridian. He died at the scene.

The Boise Office of Police Accountability reviewed the incident and eventually came to the same conclusion as an internal department review and an investigation by the Ada County Critical Incident Task Force: Nash presented an immediate threat to officers’ lives, so the use of lethal force was reasonable.

But both the Boise Police Department’s review and the accountability report pointed out a number of ways in which officers could have set themselves up for a better, safer outcome, and policy changes have been made as a result of the shooting, covering topics such as de-escalation and “vehicle assaults.”

New policies could change future procedure

Officers located Nash in January 2023 and planned to arrest him with little warning because they did not want him to delete “potentially valuable evidence” from his phone, according to the report.

“Officers surveilled Mr. Nash for several hours waiting for him to lead them to where he had been residing,” the report said. “They observed him move to several different business parking lots before finally parking near the Texas Roadhouse restaurant.”

Nash sat in the parking lot on his phone. Officers “recognized the difficulty of conducting surveillance in heavy rush-hour traffic and after dark,” so they decided to move forward with an arrest at about 4 p.m., the report said.

The Office of Police Accountability acknowledged that there was a “legitimate urgency” for the arrest, but criticized the use of a “vehicle assault type arrest plan.” The report said police could have taken more time, which could have led to negotiation opportunities and “less lethal options.”

“While Mr. Nash may have been able to delete any evidence on his phone, officer safety and safety of the suspect outweighs the potential loss of evidence,” the report said. “If Mr. Nash had chosen not to comply and barricaded himself in the car, officers, with time and tactical advantage in their favor, may have had opportunities to negotiate, consider less lethal options, and possibly resolve the situation without the necessity to use deadly force.”

Five officers in vehicles surrounded Nash’s car. He did not comply with officers’ commands, even after law enforcement broke open the driver’s window, which caused Nash to jump into the backseat.

Dark-colored fabric in the windows prevented officers from seeing in, so Boise Police Cpl. Kip Paporello went to look through the rear windshield, according to the report and previous Statesman stories.

“Cpl. Paporello observed Mr. Nash pointing a handgun toward the rear driver’s side window and door where (other officers) were positioned. Cpl. Paporello then fired his duty handgun four times through the back windshield into the backseat at Mr. Nash.”

The CITF investigation determined that Nash’s pistol was a “9 mm CZ handgun with 14 rounds loaded in the magazine and a round in the chamber” with an “exposed hammer, which was cocked and ready to fire.”

The Office of Police Accountability said an update to the department’s use-of-force policy would have required officers to demonstrate better planning for the arrest, obtain appropriate resources and “designate roles and tactics to allow time, distance, and flexibility for the situation to resolve.”

The report said officers have been training on new policies that emphasize the importance of planning, resources, controlling the pace of an operation, constant communication between officers, de-escalation and report documentation. A supervisor also must oversee such planned arrests.

According to the Boise Police Department’s review, cited in Tuesday’s report, there were “deficiencies in procedures” during the incident, including the lack of a supervisor at the site; the lack of a designated leader; hasty planning “over the radio”; and failure to notify Meridian police or Ada County Dispatch about the operation.

The internal police report also said that “from the outset, officers should have considered a plan to block the suspect vehicle and then attempt to call the suspect out of his car while officers utilized positions of cover.”

The accountability office said it intends to review future use-of-force incidents with all of the police policy updates in mind.