BCSO dedicated to community's safety

The Boundary County Sheriff’s Office has partnered with the Boundary County School District and the Bonners Ferry Police Department to staff an additional school resource officer position with a sheriff’s deputy. The additional SRO provides more opportunities to have positive interactions with students, and provides an increased presence and security in schools and to intervene when potential problems develop. 

The sheriff’s office currently has one drug detection K9, “Buddy,” Buddy is a very playful and energetic yellow lab. He is available to provide assistance to any officer with detection needs in Boundary County. He has been very successful when deployed in vehicle stops, building searches and open area checks. With the potential help from very generous donations, the sheriff’s office will be adding an additional detection K9 during the upcoming year. It is our intention to assign this K9 to the school resource officer to help with the detection and deterring of drugs from coming into our schools.

We continue to partner with our community by providing free training classes like safe winter driving, and an upcoming off-highway vehicle (motorcycle, ATV) course for youth.

The Boundary County Sheriff’s Office operates the county’s 911 and dispatch center. Over the last year, we have worked with Bonner County, Shoshone County and Post Falls Police Department to create a redundancy in the 911 infrastructure to provide greater reliability for emergency calls into each of the individual departments. Should there be an equipment or connectivity failure in any one of the agencies’ dispatch centers, one of the other agencies will be able to receive and assist with dispatching emergency services until the problem is resolved. This project is largely funded through a grant administered by the state of Idaho’s E911 grant program. 

We continue to work with our commissioners on long-term planning for jail needs and funding sources to keep as much of a burden off of property tax for building a new jail to meet current and future needs. Taking the time to research what the needs are, and doing proper planning now will pay off in the future.

The sheriff’s office has been and is still investigating several very complicated cases. The most recent case involved a shooting between numerous armed subjects over a property access dispute. Two people were injured in that incident. Last fall, a hiker was reported missing and an extensive search was conducted in the Saddle Peak area of Boundary County. Thousands of man-hours were spent trying to locate him but efforts were unsuccessful before winter set in. An ongoing investigation into a death that had occurred in 2019 led to a man being charged in the shooting death of his wife and subsequent fire at her residence. That case is still proceeding through the judicial process. 

The most important part of our sheriff’s office is the dedicated and professional employees. They do their job to serve the community because they care about the people and the community in which they also live.

This article ran in the Bonners Ferry Herald 2024 Progress publication.