Man shot and killed by police in Boise’s West End early Saturday morning

A man is dead after he was shot by police in Boise’s West End neighborhood early Saturday, according to the Boise Police Department.

At about 1:20 a.m., two Boise police officers responded to a property check call on N. 21st Street near West Pleasanton Avenue after receiving a report that a person had been trespassing and squatting there “for a couple of nights in an enclosed area,” according to a police news release.

The officers looked for the man in an alley, the release said, and announced themselves as police when they found him and approached him.

“The suspect was laying on the ground and as officers asked him to show his hands, the suspect produced what appeared to be a handgun, pointing it toward officers,” according to the release. “Officers gave quick commands to drop the gun and were forced to respond to what they believed was an immediate threat to their life.”

The officers called for Ada County Paramedics, but the man was pronounced dead at a local hospital. He has not been identified.

According to the release, one of the officers was injured in the incident with a “superficial wound.” The officers’ names have not been released.

The Ada County Critical Incident Task Force, led by the Ada County Sheriff’s Office, will investigate the shooting, the release said. BPD also will conduct its own investigation, as will the city of Boise Office of Police Accountability.

The early-morning incident is the first fatal shooting by Boise Police this year, but the third officer-involved shooting for the department in just four weeks. It’s the first time since 2018 that BPD has had multiple shootings in one year.

The most shootings in any year since 2010 came in 2016, when there were five. There were two in 2015, three in 2017 and two in 2018, according to BPD data provided in response to an Idaho Statesman public records request.

Saturday’s shooting also was the fifth police shooting in the Treasure Valley since the end of June, with the other two involving the Nampa Police Department. One of the Nampa incidents resulted in a fatality, and there also was a deadly Garden City Police Shooting this year.

So far in 2021, there have been seven fatal police shootings in Idaho, according to Statesman records.