BOISE — The Boise Police Department recently released the 2018 crime statistics which shows an 18.3 percent increase in narcotics violations. Cody Evans says the BPD first started noticing the problem about five years ago.
"Maybe we're seeing more and maybe it's also attributed to neighbors just feeling more comfortable that they can reach out to us and so we're hearing about more problems," said Evans.
He says they've been working on what's called intelligent led policing which uses neighbors to look out for problems.
"We pride ourselves on Boise being the best place to live. In order to be that best place to live, we like to increase the quality of life of Boise residents and when they have issues, we try to get on them and address them as soon as we can."
Evans says they have developed a Treasure Valley wide partnership with addiction recovery programs. With the recent search warrants, they were able to find people who were in the beginning stages of addiction or long time use.
"We're able to offer them that diversion program, get them over to recovery for life and through those programs hopefully help them overcome their addiction."
Evan says we have a long ways to go.
"Arrested over and over again the same people so jail is not fixing it, us continually putting them in jail or prison hasn't been fixing it so we're looking for another solution. I'm passionate about it because if we can get them help then we've helped develop citizens in the community can contribute instead of take away."
