Partnering in the field and behind the scenes, the Boise Police and Fire Departments present a joint five-year plan for public safety. Together we aim to lay the groundwork for both departments to strategically plan for future public safety needs in the City of Boise while staying aligned with city priorities. Our goal is to use community feedback, expert planners, and professional experience to make this five-year proposal a template for long-term public safety planning that benefits the community we serve. This proposal includes plans to address immediate staffing and resource needs, share our response evolution plans, and identify what we need for capital and investment while prioritizing employee wellness. Keeping with city values, we know when we take better care of our first responders, they take better care of the community.
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Evolve response models to proactively meet the changing needs of a growing community while striving for excellence in service.
See MoreImplement new recruitment strategies to staff fire deployment models and fill open police positions. Deploy resources most efficiently to have the highest impact on the public we serve. Take care of employees through increased supervision, training, support
staff, and equipment.
Ensure public safety has the physical infrastructure in the right places to continue providing high service levels as the city grows.
See MoreEnhance holistic wellness programming to ensure first responders receive necessary physical, mental, and occupational support.
See MoreResponse Siting Plan
Layer additional resources onto existing firefighting coverage to address community needs in targeted areas.
Supplemental Response
Design strategic response to address specific needs within the community (non-injury/urgent), support peak hours, and rapid team response for targeted quality community service.
Special Teams Centralization
Reallocate specialty team resources to areas that are most impacted (i.e., river, foothills, major throughfares) within the community to maintain timely and quality service.
Strategic Planning
Situate the department with long-term planning capabilities that allow us to best deploy our resources based on community expectations while remaining agile and fiscally responsible.
Organized Crime Unit
Dedicate resources with expertise in identifying and stopping a growing number of outside organized crime rings (i.e., human trafficking, gang violence, and retail theft) from victimizing the Boise Community.
Special Teams Centralization
In response to community expectations around specialized response, dedicate more officers to critical specialty teams instead of having officers take on these roles as ancillary assignments (i.e., Community Liaison Officers, Special Operations Group)
Public Safety Collaborative Response
Continue to identify opportunities where fire and police can unite resources to meet the evolving complexities of our community.
2028 Performance Goals
Increase call reliability in dense areas through targeted deployment response.
Respond to all emergency calls in under 4 minutes.
Deploy a total response package that ensures quality service while remaining dedicated to efficient use of resources.
Targeted Four Person Staffing
Increase crew continuity to allow staff to better understand the community they serve and prioritize employee wellness, therefore ensuring continued quality service and positive outcomes.
Shift Safety Officers
Establish Shift Safety Officers to mitigate on-scene risk, manage shift injuries/illness, implement after-action reviews of critical incidents, and be the primary liaison to City Risk.
Succession Planning
Ensure our current staff has a clear and successful pathway into leadership roles and prioritize professional development & succession planning.
Part-Time Specialists
Support Training & Prevention sworn staff to meet growing demands. Prioritize retirees for positions to maximize expertise and mental wellness.
Administrative Support
Prioritize quality over quantity and reclassify current position requirements to provide proper business management support.
Increase Officer Count
Increase officer count to be in line with a peer city average of 1.8/1,000 residents resulting in reduced officer burnout, better customer service, faster response times, improved investigations, increased supervision, and ultimately deeper community trust.
School Resource Officers
Increase unit resources to focus on mentoring and educating more elementary and junior high school and senior high school students while also assisting with properly addressing juvenile investigations.
Traffic Unit
Add resources to address traffic-related safety concerns, which is consistently a top community complaint.
Behavior Health Response
Expand resources to support a growing number of mental health-related calls and welfare checks, which is our top call for service.
Professional Staff Support
Maintain a minimum of 27% professional staff to total department employees to maximize opportunities for non-sworn duties and support.
Strategic Recruitment Planning
Retool recruitment approach to appeal to younger generations, promote diversity and ensure a quality pool of candidates.
2028 Performance Goals
Receive an ISO 1 rating to reduce commercial and residential insurance costs by increasing staffing levels.
Right size units to adequately respond to community needs.
As we grow our staff, we will focus on recruiting employees with diverse life experiences to reflect the demographics of the community we serve.
Station 13 Build
Build a new fire station in the NW region of Boise to ensure a ~5-minute travel time to community calls for service.
Station 5 Build
Replace downtown Station 5, built in 1906, with a future-proof facility that works long-term for firefighters and the community.
Station Siting Plan
Stay proactive by predicting the desired locations of future fire stations based on growth patterns and community needs to ensure adequate response times for the southern region of Boise.
Sustainable Fleet
Promote efficient driving, reduce unnecessary idling, minimize a fleet’s carbon footprint, optimize routes, practice proactive vehicle maintenance and work to integrate electric vehicles.
Fire Training Facility Growth
Create new private-public partnerships to grow fire safety plans and responses for all community members.
Maximize Technology
Use technology to respond smarter and faster to emerging crime trends and maximize information necessary for officers and the public to make better decisions about safety.
Facilities Strategic Plan
Proactively ensure the department is preparing for future needs regarding training, storage, crime lab, and office space to continue providing equal or greater service levels.
East Station
Strategically locate officers in East Boise to lower response times and provide better visibility of safety and security, allowing officers to spend more time in the area they patrol rather than commuting on shift to City Hall West.
Downtown Station Expansion
Create a downtown destination for the public and officers to meet and allow more officers, from traffic enforcement to detectives, to work in the area they patrol rather than spend time on shift commuting to City Hall West.
Police Training Center Expansion
Develop a first-class training center to train the next generation of officers and show the community we are committed to evolving and meeting community expectations.
Public Safety Shared Facilities
Continue to explore opportunities for shared spaces in current and new facilities.
2028 Performance Goals
Obtain a 5-minute travel time in Boise Fire district.
Create long-term plans to respond strategically to public safety needs and faster to new expectations.
Strategically locate facilities throughout the community.
Program Management
Create an Administrative Captain position to prioritize first responder wellness unique to Fire employees and retirees.
Program Management
Create an Administrative Lieutenant position to prioritize first responder wellness unique to Police employees and retirees.
Holistic Wellness for Public Safety Entities
Partner to identify opportunities for a shared approach to first responder employee wellness.
Mental Resiliency
Focus on suicide prevention, sleep welfare, spousal support, and trauma recovery for first responders.
Physical Health
Emphasize holistic wellness through fitness programming, injury reduction, and proactive illness detection.
Occupational Wellbeing
Enhance learning and development programs, formalize after-action reviews, and standardize succession planning for fire and police employees.
Wellness + Fitness Grants
Seek grants specific to firefighter health and wellness to support initiatives for police & fire.
2028 Performance Goals
Increase proactive presumptive illness detection.
Expand employee wellness program post-grant timeline.
Decrease lost days by proactively mitigating foreseeable injuries.
Key Metrics
Boise Fire and Police will partner with Planning and Development Services to generate a live mapping resource that aggregates and tracks data in the coming year. Doing this will ensure that the City of Boise’s public safety resources is proactive in planning resource allocation (human, facility, and equipment). By automating the data points below, we will be able to spend less time extracting the data and more time analyzing the information and using it to make intelligent decisions.
- Call Volume
- Unit Reliability
- Response Times
- Total Response
- Force
- Call Types
- Population
- Demographics
- Zoning Codes
- Transportation Methods
- Call Volume
- Case Load
- Response Times
- Report Types
- Crime Trends
- Population
- Demographics
- Zoning Codes
- Transportation Methods
102 additional sworn members
19 additional civilian employees
Summary of Staffing Demands
- Service area population 255,859 (Boise, Garden City)
- Approved for 268 sworn positions
- Currently, at 1.0 firefighters per 1,000
- Peer city's average is 1.5 per 1,000
- 117 firefighters needed to be at 1.5 with current population numbers
- Go from an ISO rating 2 to ISO 1 requires increased staffing
- Supplementing urban response services to meet demand while being efficient with resources
- Right-sizing resource workloads to ensure a fulltime focus on employee wellness, community risk reduction, training, and emergency medicine
129 additional sworn members
20 additional civilian employees
Summary of Staffing Demands
- Boise City's population is 243,570 (Compass 2022)
- Approved for 333 sworn
- Currently, at 1.4 officers per 1,000
- Peer city's average is 1.8 officers per 1,000
- 129 officers needed to be at 1.8 with current population numbers
- Right-sizing across all divisions to ensure we have patrol officers responding to emergency calls, detectives to solve criminal activities and adequate staffing to continue community-oriented policing efforts which reduces crime long term.
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