Eastern Idaho Sees Fifth Police Shooting In a Single Week. Here’s What You Need to Know.

Yesterday, the Idaho State Journal reported a police shooting at an apartment complex in Rexburg on Monday night where a 50-year-old man, whose name has not yet been released, was shot and killed by a police officer.

In the past five years, Eastern Idaho has only had 12 police shootings that resulted in death and never more than three in the same year. However, police shooting in Rexburg, marks the fifth police shooting — fourth fatal shooting — in the last week, alone. The other police shootings took place in Rose-Firth, Pocatello, Idaho Falls, and Bingham County.

Police violence is a form of gun violence, and it is essential that law enforcement agencies adopt meaningful use of force policies, which encourage de-escalation, utilize early intervention systems, and ensure that officers who act in a manner that is criminally negligent can be held accountable.  

Research suggests that implementing specific use-of-force policies can save lives. One 2016 study of 91 large police departments found adoption of use-of-force reform policies—exhaustion of other means prior to shooting, bans on chokeholds and strangleholds, use-of-force continuum, de-escalation, duty to intervene, restrictions on shootings at moving vehicles, and warning before shooting—was associated with fewer people killed by police. 

Black Americans are shot and killed by police at three times the rate of white Americans, and data from Mapping Police Violence shows that most people killed by police are killed with guns. Between 2013-2020, 57 people were killed by police in Idaho — and Black people were more than three times as likely to be killed by police as white people during that time. 

More information on gun violence in Idaho is available here.