x
Breaking News
More () »

2nd Boise police officer voiced concerns, according to records from whistleblower suit

The lawsuit claims that Boise Police Lt. Greg Oster “openly” sold weapons, both to officers and the public, out of his police department office.
Credit: Idaho Press
A copy of one of the pictures Boise Police Cpl. Norman "Denny" Carter's attorney sent Mayor Dave Bieter showing the "storefront" Lt. Greg Oster was allowed to maintain at the Boise Police Department's headquarters.

BOISE, Idaho — A separate Boise police officer, in conversation with a fact-gatherer, voiced “related complaints” to those of a whistleblower who is suing the Boise Police Department, according to an order issued Monday by a judge.

The order, written by 4th District Court Judge Jonathan Medema, specified which pieces of evidence the city must turn over to Cpl. Norman “Denny” Carter of the Boise Police Department.

Carter in 2018 filed a whistleblower lawsuit, claiming that Boise Police Lt. Greg Oster “openly” sold weapons, both to officers and the public, through his private company out of his police department office. Carter also claimed Oster, who became his supervisor in 2015, retaliated against him after he raised concerns, and that other officials failed to prevent the retaliation.

While Medema's order makes a reference to the fact that another police officer had "related complaints," it does not offer any further information about what those complaints were.

RELATED: Judge to decide what Boise must release from reports on whistleblower's claims

A June 2018 report by the Boise Human Resources Department found Oster had acted unethically. He’d retired the month before, on May 30, 2018.

In the first half of 2018, two people investigated Carter’s complaints for the city. The first was an attorney the city hired, Patricia Ball, and the second was Sara Martin, of the city’s Human Resources Department. Each wrote reports, and included with those reports were many pages of notes and transcripts from their interviews with Boise police officers.

Credit: Idaho Press
A copy of one of the pictures Boise Police Cpl. Norman "Denny" Carter's attorney sent Mayor Dave Bieter showing the "storefront" Lt. Greg Oster was allowed to maintain at the Boise Police Department's headquarters.

Attorneys representing the city claimed the two reports — as well as the notes, transcripts and audio recordings — were protected by attorney-client privilege, and thus did not have to give them to Carter and his attorneys.

Medema, however, was unconvinced. He ordered the city did not have to turn over the actual reports, but wrote they did have to disclose the associated notes, transcripts and audio recordings.

“In much of the report, Ms. Ball simply summarizes the complaints she received from Mr. Carter and various documents and photographs she received from him, as well as related complaints made by another police officer,” Medema wrote in Monday’s order. “The remainder of the report consists largely of Ms. Ball summarizing her conversations with other employees of the Boise Police Department. There are small sections in the report where Ms. Ball proffers an opinion about whether she believes that the allegations made by Mr. Carter and the other police officer about their coworker(s) are true, based on wheat the witnesses have told her.”

Howard Belodoff, one of Carter’s attorneys, told the Idaho Press on Tuesday he hadn’t received the information, although he had received evidence the judge had previously ordered city attorneys to disclose.

Mike Journee, spokesman for the city, told the Idaho Press earlier this month he could not discuss the lawsuit, since litigation is ongoing.

Much of Medema’s 39-page order includes his interpretation of case law governing attorney-client privilege and work product. Idaho, Medema noted, allows for more information to be privileged than the federal law does.

“Where the client is a corporation, the protection extends to conversations between the corporation’s lawyer (or representatives of the lawyer) and the employees of the corporation who are ‘authorized to communicate information obtained in the course of employment to the attorney of the client,'” Medema wrote. “The city of Boise has adopted a policy that arguably not only authorizes every employee to do so, but also commands them to do so. Many … are critical of states that grant corporations such a broad ability to cloak conversations with employees about a particular event in the attorney client privilege. They argue it turns the privilege from a shield into a sword; with the practical effect of increasing litigation costs and extending the time cases take to resolve in courts.”

Medema said it appears the city’s attorneys seemed less concerned about Carter’s attorneys gaining an unfair advantage, and more about “one litigant attempting to make it as difficult and expensive as possible for the other litigant to obtain evidence to support his claims.”

Carter has two cases open against the city of Boise: the whistleblower lawsuit and a second case, filed in June, claiming ongoing retaliation as a result of his voicing his complaints.

The next court date in the whistleblower lawsuit, the case in which Medema filed Monday’s order, is Nov. 18. In Carter’s more recent case, a Nov. 6 court date is set. Attorneys have filed a motion to consolidate the two cases, but the judge has not yet ruled on that motion.

More from our partner Idaho Press: Climate change is an 'existential' issue that can be defeated, former Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar says

Before You Leave, Check This Out