The Moscow Murders and More

The Idaho State Police And The Budget In The Wake Of Murders

From the archives: 6-16-23

Whenever there is a complex crime that takes place, it takes a lot of resources for that crime to be solved. When you have four homicides take place at the same time, the price tag of that investigation automatically shoots into the stratosphere.

In this episode, we take a look at the burden the investigation has placed upon the budget of Moscow and what the city council plans on doing to shore up the prosecutors coffers.

(commercial at 9:30)

to contact me:

bobbycapucci@protonmail.com

source:

Idaho college murders case prompts prosecution ask for big budget hike - ABC News (go.com)

Duration:: 12m
Broadcast on:: 02 Jan 2025
Audio Format:: other

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Yesterday, we were talking about Anne Taylor and how much money she's going to be making an hour to defend Brian Coburger. Well, on this episode, I wanted to talk a little bit about how much the state of Idaho and the Idaho state police have spent so far on this case. And when you're dealing with a quadruple homicide, it's certainly going to add some cost to the budget that we're unforeseen. And a place like Idaho that's not that populated, they're obviously working on a smaller budget than a place like New York City or Los Angeles or something like that. So things get a bit more restrictive, right? And they don't have as many resources available to them, initially, as some other places might have. But the Idaho state police and the investigators in the state in general were able to overcome some of those shortfalls in the beginning of this investigation. And then with the assistance of their big brother in the FBI, they were able to finally make an arrest in the case. But what is the Idaho state police budget in general and how much of that budget was used up conducting this investigation? So today, that's what we're going to talk about. And to do that, we have two articles from KTVB 7, and the first one is from January 17th of 2023. And the author is Andrew Bartlin. Governor Brad Little proposed increasing Idaho state police commission state trooper pay by 10%, additionally, he aims to spend $200,000 on additional safety equipment for each trooper. The mall shooting that occurred in Boise Mall in October of 2021, we recognize immediately we didn't have the equipment we needed. ISP Deputy Director, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Gardner. One of those is ballistic tactical vests that a trooper can throw on and run in. Now, I've been pretty clear about how I feel about all of these military type weapons that police departments are acquiring. But when you're talking about body armor, I think that's a necessity for police officers. They have to have that body armor. I'm not a fan of tanks. I'm not a fan of all that other shit that you would see in on actual battlefields. Being in the possession of our police departments, except in the most extreme circumstances. When you're going to enact a warrant at somebody's house for a minor drug possession, you don't need to show up in a tank. Each trooper is already issued body armor. It is typically worn under their uniform according to Gardner. However, these specific ballistic vests are tailored towards stopping high-powered rounds. The $200,000 would also purchase chest protectors and riot gear for ISP according to Gardner. This gear has become increasingly necessary amid events over the last couple of years. You know what else would be real helpful? Using some of this money to retrain some of these officers and help them out in that regard as well. It's all fine and well to give these guys weapons of war. But how about we arm them mentally so they're capable of dealing with the bullshit they got to deal with on a day-to-day basis? When we brought that to their attention, the governor's office was quick to recognize that this is the need. Every state trooper needs to have that to do their job, Gardner said. But getting qualified people to do the job isn't equal need. At any given time, ISP could be looking to hire 20-30 state troopers. When ISP hired Gardner, on 25 years ago, the agency selected him from a pool of more than 1,000 applicants. It just shows you how the shine of becoming a law enforcement officer has worn off for a lot of people. Hiring people is very difficult right now. Now we're at the point where we hope to get between 100-200 people, Gardner said. It's dramatically changed from the number of people who are either interested in law enforcement or those who feel as though it is a career that will pay them enough to support their family. The 10% pay increase intends to attract new talent and retain current troopers. Governor Little's budget also aims to provide more support to the Idaho Peace Officer Standards and Training Division. Post-Division Administrator Brad Johnson announced in October that division would cancel three academies due to inflation. Now you see where my problem is? We're going to cancel. The academics were going to cancel the training as far as interpersonal situations. But we're going to buy more weapons of war. We're not putting these police officers in a position to succeed. And then you wonder why nobody's joining up and wants to deal with that bullshit. In response, the proposed budget sets aside $1.1 million to be split between the 2023 fiscal year budget, the 2024 fiscal year budget and the physical year budget ending on June 30th. With that additional revenue, it should be sufficient to meet our training needs through the next 18 months, Johnson said. Training is one of our primary missions. We take it seriously. When we're unable to do that in the manner we should, nobody enjoys that. Yeah, it opens the state up to all kinds of lawsuits. It opens the citizens up to having shitty encounters with police officers who are not trained correctly. And then that leads to animosity in the community. Nobody needs that in their life. But I wanted to talk about this article first before we dive into the next one. So we kind of get an idea of what their budgets looking like. Alright, so our next article is from KTVB as well. And this one's discussing how much the Idaho State Police have spent on the Moscow murders investigation. Headline, here's how much Idaho State Police have spent on the Moscow murders investigation. This article was authored by Alexandra Duggan and Danny Alsop. The murders of four University of Idaho students in November of 2022 was a massive investigation that required many resources from police and other agencies to work together. And with that came a $282,109.35 of expenditures related to the homicide case by the Idaho State Police. Now look at that number and then look at the other numbers we were just talking about in that other article. So this is basically a fifth of their whole budget blown on this one investigation. And that's not even including what the FBI and the federal government spent as well. We're never going to get that information because, you know, the FBI does whatever they want and checks and balances are for other people, not them. But the FBI, meaning you and me, spent a ton of money on this case as well. There was a bunch of federal dollars that were being used by the federal departments. But the state of Idaho, they're not ended up being like one fifth of their law enforcement budget for the whole year. When Kaylee Gonsalves Madison Morgan Ethan Chapin and Zana Carnotal were stabbed to death in a home off campus on November 13, 2022, Moscow Police, Idaho State Police and the FBI began the long process of investigating their deaths. It led to the arrest of 28 year old Brian Kohlberger, a Washington State University PhD student based on DNA, found at the scene. The expenditures of $282,109.35 obtained through a public records request is the exact amount of funds used as the February 6, which includes travel, overtime, lab testing, storage of evidence and other miscellaneous police work. According to ISP Communications Director Aaron Snell, ISP dedicated significant resources to help the Moscow police of smaller scale police department. Snell said the investigation of the four murders qualifies as a large investigation and that cases and costs at this magnitude are uncommon occurrences in comparison to other investigations. But he doesn't think there is a set parameter to accurately quantify them. Idaho Governor Brad Little allocated $1 million from the state emergency fund in order to help law enforcement. When Little announced the funding, he said the expenses would be determined by ISP with the help of other police agencies. Snell said ISP currently is paying for expenses related to the case from a miscellaneous revenue until reimbursement is received from Little's office. So the good news for Idaho is they're going to get that money replenished from that emergency fund because you look at the clip that it would have taken out of the budget and that would have been all bad for Idaho and then policing the state. We're talking about losing a fifth of your budget in the middle of inflation. So that's never a good thing, right? So thankfully they were able to get some of this dough from this emergency fund and that'll go a long way to replenish what they have lost. ISP has not used all of Little's allocated funds, Snell said, but there will be additional costs as the investigation continues. Moscow Police Department denied a records request, inquiring about their expenditures related to the case. According to Moscow's city attorney, information regarding how much the NPD has spent is in violation of the non dissemination order in the case against Kohlberger. This is what I talked about yesterday and the problem with the gag order being of this scope. It's going to give cover to people like the Moscow Police Department who just don't want to be truthful. And there's no reason that a gag order should restrict the public and the media from knowing how much money has been spent on this. Remember, these are taxpayer dollars. The people of Idaho, they pay their taxes every year and they expect some transparency on the back end of that. They want to know how their money is being spent, right? So I think it's a bad move and a bad look from the Moscow Police Department to deny this records request. On the flip side, I think it's a good move from the state police. The more transparency, the better. And if the state police can provide this without it being under the gag order, how is it that the Moscow Police Department are going to try and stand on that untenable ground? So I don't think that's the last we've heard of that, honestly, and I wouldn't be shocked to see the media try and get those records by other means. And I'm guessing they're going to be firing off a lot of other requests for public records as we move forward. So it's going to be interesting to see how that all goes and it's going to be real interesting to see if the vastness and the broad scope of the gag order protects the Moscow Police Department from releasing this information. Alright folks, well that's going to do it for this one. All of the information that goes with this episode can be found in the description box.