During a presentation in June, Ada County Sheriff Matt Clifford told county commissioners that his office’s workload is increasing, citing a nearly 25% increase in crime in his office’s jurisdiction since 2019, a sharp increase in the number of officers assaulted on patrol and in jail, and early results from an Idaho Policy Institute survey that found about 20% of Ada County residents feel “less safe.”

As the county’s population grows, “our communities are becoming more dangerous,” he said, attributing the changes to “unrest on a national level” and the region’s “changing demographics.”

“This is not the same community we grew up in,” he said.

Yet the Boise and Meridian police departments are not seeing an increase in crime rates in their own jurisdictions, and the number of recorded crimes across Ada County has declined since 2019. So what did Clifford mean by “dangerous” and what might explain this discrepancy?

Chris Saunders, data and analytics manager for the sheriff’s office, attributed the difference largely to whether one looks at the total number of crimes committed or the crime rate based on population.

Ada County Sheriff’s Office officers patrol unincorporated Ada County and three cities that contract with the sheriff for policing: Eagle, Kuna and Star. The crime rate – the number of crimes per 100,000 residents – has remained relatively stable in this jurisdiction, with a slight increase between 2019 and 2023, according to Idaho State Police annual reports.

However, combined with rapid population growth, this is leading to more crimes being committed overall, says Saunders.

In 2019, the sheriff’s office documented a total of 2,977 crimes in the areas it oversees; in 2023, that number rose to 3,710, according to state police reports. That means more reports need to be written, more documents filed and more court hearings attended, Saunders said.

“It’s both a workload reduction measure and a recognition of the fact that there’s just more crime happening here,” he said. “The more people that come here, the more people we have committing crimes.”

What “dangerous” means is “really defined on an individual basis” depending on what type of crime county residents see as the greatest threat to their communities, Saunders said. His office has seen the biggest increase in drug-related crimes in recent years, while there has been only a small increase in crimes between two people, such as assault.

Property crimes such as theft are now even declining, so you are “less likely to have your house broken into, less likely to have your car broken into, and less likely to be a victim of fraud” than in recent years, he said.

Overall crime is declining in Boise, Meridian and Ada County

But data from Boise and Meridian paint a different picture. The crime rate per 100,000 residents has dropped significantly in both counties since 2019: by almost 50% in Boise and by almost 30% in Meridian.

And despite population growth, both Boise and Meridian are seeing gradual declines in overall crime. Total crime in Boise has dropped from over 12,000 crimes in 2019 to around 10,000 in 2023. In Meridian, total crimes have dropped from about 4,500 in 2019 to about 3,800 in 2023. Total crimes in Ada County have dropped from about 21,000 to 19,000 over the same period.

Saunders said this discrepancy can be explained by the different areas of jurisdiction and the capacity and division of labor within each department. Boise police, for example, serve a contiguous area, while the sheriff’s office’s jurisdiction is “spread all over the place.”

The sheriff’s office has more officers than its counterparts in Boise or Meridian: 325 deputy sheriffs, compared to nearly 300 sworn officers in Boise and nearly 150 in Meridian.

The sheriff’s office — “one of the few (law enforcement) agencies in the county that’s practically fully staffed,” Saunders said — also has the ability to be proactive, which can lead to higher crime rates as more crimes are uncovered. For example, officers can catch more people in possession of drugs through more traffic stops.

Meridian Police Chief Tracy Basterrechea took a different view. He said his department aims to spend 60% of its time on proactive policing, which includes time at parks or local businesses talking to residents. In his view, proactive policing contributes to lower crime because police make their presence known and convince potential criminals that they should “move on.”

One-third of Boise police officers focus on proactive public relations and problem solving, according to a 2023 department report. The other two-thirds are split between patrol and criminal investigations.

Another factor, Saunders said, is that Boise police receive many more 911 calls than their suburban counterparts because of their populous jurisdiction. Comparing the sheriff’s office’s approach to that of Boise police is like “comparing apples to oranges,” he said.

In some communities more police officers attacked while on duty

One of Clifford’s concerns, raised in his June presentation, was an increase in attacks on his deputies, both on patrol and in the county jail. In 2023, the sheriff’s jurisdiction recorded 27 attacks on officers, compared to nine in 2019. Meridian also saw an increase during that time period.

Boise saw a decline in the number of police officers assaulted from 94 in 2019 to 72 in 2023. But “anecdotally,” department spokeswoman Haley Williams told the Statesman, the department is seeing “an increase in instances where officers encounter individuals willing to use violence, deadly force or weapons against officers in the line of duty.”

In April, Deputy Sheriff Tobin Bolter was fatally shot during a traffic stop – as the Statesman previously reported, he was the first deputy sheriff to be killed in the line of duty.

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