Addressing misconceptions of crime in Canyon County - Idaho Press-Tribune

Nampa Mayor Bob Henry has friends who live in Meridian who have joked about leaving Canyon County before dark due to the alleged crime taking place.

“It’s a joke, but it’s not very funny to me,” he said. “When you talk to Canyon County people, you don’t hear those fears about drive-by shootings and gang-related stuff.”

Henry said he’s heard residents of nearby Ada County explain that their county is a much safer place to live.

“It’s very frustrating to me,” he said. “I hear stuff from Canyon County residents about the roads and other things, but I just don’t hear about crime.”

According to the numbers, Canyon County is just as safe as neighboring counties like Ada.

Crime data collected by Idaho State Police shows that there were about about 11 violent crime victims per 1,000 residents of Canyon County in 2015 compared to about 10 per 1,000 residents in Ada County that same year.

Canyon County, Idaho’s second most populated county with about 200,000 residents, experienced a general reduction in the number of violent crime victims between the years 2006-15. There were 29 percent fewer violent crime victims in Canyon County in 2015 compared to 2006.

Those violent crimes include murder, aggravated battery, simple assault, intimidation, kidnapping/abduction and sexual assaults.

Former Nampa Police Chief Craig Kingsbury, in a guest opinion published in the Idaho Press-Tribune in 2015, wrote that gang-related crime in Canyon County has dropped significantly since the early 2000s.

He wrote that in 2005, Nampa experienced 250 drive-by shootings in a single year and only three in 2014.

In 2014, the city recorded 76 gang-related crimes, with three being violent. Most of that gang-related crime is graffiti, the former police chief wrote.

Henry said the city hasn’t created a marketing or public relations campaign to address the crime perception in Nampa for two reasons: constantly bringing the issue up only fuels that perception, and businesses looking to move to the area aren’t bringing it up.

“I remember 13 years ago when the gangs were really bad, but when I talk with businesses who want to come into the area, they don’t even bring up crime,” he said. “They want to know what we can do for them and what kind of workforce we have.”

STEMMING THE TIDE

Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue knows first-hand how police were able to turn an area once ridden with gang violence into a peaceful community.

Not only has he been elected twice as the county’s top law enforcement officer, he also served on an FBI-sponsored police task force that was key in helping to substantially lower the amount of gang-related violent crime that plagued Canyon County in the mid- and early-2000s.

“2004 and 2005 were the worst years that I am aware of,” Donahue said. “We’re talking a minimum of 400 gang shootings in a two-year period.”

Since then, gang-related violent crime in Canyon County has declined significantly, as has violent crime in general, and that’s largely due to local, state and federal law enforcement cooperation and coordination.

Donahue said that back in the 1990s, gang members largely from northern and southern California realized that there weren’t police efforts in Canyon County to deal directly with the gangs, since local law enforcement hadn’t seen the phenomenon. The gangs started recruiting young people whom they could have commit crimes and not face charges as an adult.

He said Nampa and Caldwell police were doing what they could to address the gang violence, but they simply didn’t have enough resources to stem the tide of gang activity.

“Shootings really escalated in 2004 and it was coming from dope distribution, robberies, burglaries or anything else that could escalate into violence,” he said. “Also, there is that rival mentality, protecting your turf.”

In October 2005, during the height of gang violence in Canyon County, Donahue said then-Sheriff Chris Smith asked him to join a “safe streets” task force, called the Metro Treasure Valley Violent Crimes Task Force.

“People from the FBI, ATF and local police chiefs had come together and said, ‘We need to do something,’” he said. “Then the FBI stepped up and said we’ll sponsor the task force.”

To fund the task force, Donahue said, each department had to contribute one of their best officers, and when assembled, there were nine members who set up operations in a condemned building where they could operate undercover.

“Our directive was to get to the target, the hierarchy of the gangs and take them out then address the lower tiers,” he said. “We were also dealing with non-gang violent crimes. It was a target-rich environment.”

He said the task force became a “force multiplier,” meaning they could assist any local agency and had the authority to cross jurisdictional boundaries since the task force officers were deputized as federal agents with the U.S. Marshal’s Office.

The sheriff said gangs like the Norteños and Sureños were infiltrated in two ways: the undercover purchase of guns and drugs and by undercover task force members and through criminal informants or “snitches.”

He said state and federal prosecutors worked with criminal informants that the police had picked up on charges or had recruited from the gangs. Prosecutors offered them reduced sentences or possible immunity for cooperating with law enforcement in their fight against organized crime as part of long-term investigations.

FBI Special Agent and Metro Treasure Valley Violent Crimes Task Force Coordinator Doug Hart said that since each member of the task force also belongs to an individual agency, information shared within each agency is also shared with the task force as a whole so that Treasure Valley police are on the same page.

“We found that collaboration and cooperation brings dramatic results,” he said.

Hart said through a coalition made up of 14 city mayors and three county commissioners in the area, called the Treasure Valley Partnership, money was set aside to hire a Gang Special Assistant U.S. attorney, or SAUSA, assigned specifically to handle gang and violent crime cases.

Currently, the partnership funds roughly $30,000 of the SAUSA’s $100,000 annual salary, with Idaho picking up the rest. Treasure Valley Partnership Project Manager Bill Larsen said charging violent offenders with federal crimes and housing them in federal prisons saves Idaho’s taxpayers about $3 million a year.

Hart said the introduction of the SAUSA in 2006 was “hugely significant” and that the SAUSA began working hand-in-hand with law enforcement to charge violent criminals with federal crimes, which also helped break up the gang structure.

Acting U.S. Attorney Rafael Gonzalez said that since February 2007, the Treasure Valley gang SAUSA has sentenced 327 defendants to a total of 1,400 years in prison. He said the average prison sentence received was about 4.6 years.

The Treasure Valley SAUSA was so effective that a SAUSA was recently hired and established in eastern Idaho.

“It worked beautifully and methodically,” Donahue said.

Ideally, gang members are indicted or charged with federal crimes so they serve sentences in federal prisons away from Idaho because the state doesn’t have a federal prison, he said.

Donahue said when gang members are sent out of state, it becomes very difficult for them to issue orders or participate in gang activity from a jail cell hundreds of miles away.

“We have had people sent to prisons in Pennsylvania and Missouri,” he said.

Canyon County Deputy Prosecutor Ellie Somoza said she started prosecuting juvenile criminal cases in Canyon County in 2005 and that at the time most of her cases were gang-related.

Through her experience prosecuting gang cases, Somoza helped add amendments to the 2006 Idaho Criminal Gang Enforcement Act, which allows prosecutors to add penalty-laden enhancements to gang-related crimes.

“The legislation that we amended added about 30 more crimes to the number that the enhancement would apply to,” she said.

Increased penalties for the enhancement were added to the bill’s language as well, prompting prosecutors across the state to use the legislation when handling gang-related cases.

The increased penalties have served as a deterrent, she said. Since the bill allows law enforcement to label gang members based on their clothing, tattoos and associations with other gang members, gangs in Canyon County aren’t displaying their presence like they were in the early 2000s.

She said the gangs’ hesitance to show their affiliations through clothing and gang signs has resulted in less violent gang-related incidents that were caused by rival gang members running into one another in public spaces.

“Someone could be dressed in red and someone could be dressed in blue. They’d both have weapons and use them,” she said. “After we started being really aggressive with prosecution, we saw a significant drop in that type of random violence.”

Somoza said while there has been a slight resurgence in gang-related crime over the past couple of years, gang crimes are still very few. She said the Canyon County prosecutor’s office has remained proactive about pursuing charges in gang cases.

“It is safer than it used to be, but we can’t bury our heads in the sand and ignore the signs that are there,” she said. “When I do get a case, I charge it. I charge the enhancements. A message needs to be sent to these gang members.”

OUT ON THE STREETS

On a warm spring afternoon in Nampa, K-9 Officer Joel Woodward sits in an unmarked truck and watches through binoculars as a woman argues with a man on the steps of a nearby house.

The house Woodward is watching is believed to be involved with the sale of methamphetamine, a drug that is to blame for robberies, burglaries and violent crime in Canyon County.

Woodward is one of two officers in Nampa’s Repeat Offender Program which launched in June 2016. He and his partner deal with the “worst of the worst,” including gang members and drug dealers.

They make their presence clear when working Nampa’s streets.

“We want people to know we are watching them,” Woodward said. “Whether its gangs or drugs, we want people to know that we are the authorities.”

Woodward said there are several unsolved homicides being investigated by police, but those cases are hard to crack because most gang members won’t talk, and potential witnesses are afraid they’ll face retaliation if they talk to police.

He said having a K-9 handy helps him and his partner lock up gang members, many who carry drugs like methamphetamine and heroin when approached by police.

Nampa Police Chief Joe Huff said Woodward and his partner aren’t tied to 911 calls and can take their time getting to know problem areas to track the activities of repeat offenders, many of them known gang members.

“They communicate with patrol and detectives about what they are seeing out on the street,” he said. “Gangs are here, but they are not out of control. We know who they are and they know who we are.”

ADDRESSING MISCONCEPTIONS

Caldwell Mayor Garrett Nancolas said that despite data showing that Canyon County is just as safe as counties like Ada, he still deals with the perception by some that his city has a major crime problem.

“It’s unfortunate,” he said. “It’s a 15-year-old issue, and we have been working to eliminate that perception.”

Nancolas meets with local real estate agents and developers to show them crime statistics and to ensure them that Caldwell is a safe place to work and live.

“That message has been received,” he said. “We have had major companies leave Boise and Meridian to relocate to Caldwell. Those companies wouldn’t have brought their families and employees here if they thought it was unsafe.”

Though he does address the issue of crime from time to time, the city’s real focus in the last several years has been on the growth in Caldwell and opportunities for families.

“We want to brag about our achievements,” he said. “We don’t want to keep bringing up issues from the past.”

Caldwell’s Economic Development Director Steve Fultz said big companies he’s worked with over the last 10 years have rarely brought up crime when deciding to conduct business in the city and that the issue rarely comes up anymore.

“I have 10-15 active projects right now and none of them have even mentioned crime,” he said.

Fultz said when he relocated to Caldwell in 2003 from the Indianapolis area, the issue of crime was brought up during the years when gang-related violence reached all-time highs in Canyon County.

“It was not something that every lead brought up, but there was an instance in 2004 or 2005 when a small businessman wanted to move to Caldwell and decided not to because his wife heard there was lots of crime here,” he said.

When a large company looks to establish itself in Caldwell, Fultz said, they look at the crime figures and demographics in the Boise-Nampa metropolitan area as a whole and not just at Canyon County.

And since Canyon County isn’t really inundated with crime compared to other Idaho counties, he said, companies like Fresca Mexican Foods has decided to move their headquarters and 170 employees from Boise to a new, nearly 200,000-square-foot facility under construction in Caldwell.

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