BOISE, Idaho — A pair of former trainees at the Boise Police Advanced Academy plan to sue the City of Boise after they say they were retaliated against for reporting an instructor for placing another student in a chokehold.
The notice of tort claim was filed Monday by 33-year-old Joshua A. Keyser and 34-year-old Jeffrey David Triplett, both of whom had applied to work as Boise Police officers. Keyser and Triplett were both selected to go through the department's 20-week in-house training program beginning in January 2019.
Joseph Filicetti, the plaintiffs' lawyer, said the incident that led to the retaliation against his clients happened March 7, when the academy class paid a visit to the Nutrishop on Capitol Boulevard in Boise to use a machine that measures body composition.
One trainee, identified as Nate Gifford, received his results from the machine, but refused to hand them over to the group's fitness instructor Josh Kincaid, according to the filing.
At that point, according to the filing, Kincaid put Gifford in a chokehold.
"This appeared to be a violent, unwanted and unwarranted use of force by a member of the Boise Police training staff, and Gifford was flailing, trying to overcome the choke but to no avail," the notice of tort claim reads.
Keyser and Triplett, along with their fellow trainee Sierrna Berg, all witnessed the chokehold, and decided to report it to their academy instructor. According to the filing, the instructor kept their complaint at the lowest level and tried to keep Internal Affairs from getting involved.
Filicetti says all three trainees who saw the chokehold were targeted in the months that followed, as they moved out of the academy and into the field training portion of their instruction.
According to the filing, both Triplett and Keyser - by then considered probationary officers - were ultimately told they could either resign from the department or be fired. Keyser's last day was Sept. 1, while Triplett's was Friday.
Triplett, Keyser and Berg all say that false entries were made after the fact in their training records, modifying their original passing scores, according to the filing.
Filicetti, the attorney, said it is clear the trainees who witnessed their fitness officer behaving unethically "were getting slowly flushed out of the Boise Police Academy" by the department.
The notice of tort indicates that lawyers are seeking $500,000 in damages each for Keyser and Triplett. Berg is not included in the intent to file, and it is unclear whether she remains with Boise Police.
Filicetti said the former trainees decided to file the lawsuit notice - which names the City of Boise, Mayor Dave Bieter, the Boise City Council and interim Boise Police Chief Ron Winegar - after the department failed to act.
"This was turned into the Internal Affairs and nothing happened by the Boise Police Internal Affairs, so we figured a lawsuit would be the next step," he told KTVB.
A Boise Police spokeswoman said the department does not comment on pending litigation.
The notice comes at the same time as an ongoing whistleblower lawsuit against Boise Police, in which an officer with the department claims he was retaliated against after raising concerns about a police lieutenant openly selling weapons through his private company out of his police department office. That case is set for a status conference Nov. 18.
Filicetti said he plans to file a lawsuit under Idaho's whistleblower protection laws after seeing how the city responds to the tort notice.
"There are problems inside the Boise Police Department and they need to be fixed," he said. "They need to be fixed right now."
