Public Safety Five Year Plan

Response 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)

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.

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.

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.

Increase proactive presumptive illness detection.

Expand employee wellness program post-grant timeline.

Decrease lost days by proactively mitigating foreseeable injuries.

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.