Boise City Surveillance Recording Obtained By Idaho 2 News (Mayor, others, returning stolen goods)

This is how public property, which authorities now say was stolen by former mayor's aide Gary Lyman, came back into city hall on the morning of December 10th 2002. Then-Boise Mayor Brent Coles, the Boise police chief, who was also acting as the mayor's chief of staff, the mayor's special assistant and another staffer are recorded returning these items to city hall.

The camera that captured those scenes is located in the entrance from the third floor parking garage hallway into the lobby that leads to the mayor's office. There are more than a dozen surveillance cameras that record a month of the comings and goings.

In early December Idaho 2 News began asking officials at the mayor's office about questionable items that were showing up on city receipts we obtained under the Idaho Public Records Law.

Those items started showing up and no one at city hall could answer our questions as to how they were coming back. We were curious. So on December 12th we filed a public records request with the city to obtain the recordings. But we were denied by the city spokesperson at the time, Tod McKay, who told us the city no longer had them. He said the attorney general's office did.

But Idaho 2 News has now obtained a copy of some of those recordings. We have attempted to verify their authenticity and do believe they are genuine. They begin on December 10, 2002 at 8:48:50AM. That is the very same day a grand jury indictment against Gary Lyman says this merchandise came back into city possession.

The recording shows Boise Police Chief Don Pierce and Coles' special assistant waiting in that interior doorway, from time to time looking out the window. A few minutes later another assistant shows up. They wait some more. Then they all go out to the third floor parking garage. Then the merchandise starts coming back in. What appears to be office furniture,a chair, a box, what appears to be a desk.

The four go back out, prop open a door as the camera continues to record. The bottom portion of an office chair is carried inside. That is followed by a shot of the former mayor bringing in an arm load of boxes followed by the police chief with what appears to be the top portion of a desk.

Just before 9:00 am the chief is seen leaving. Coles makes one more trip into the building with something tucked under his arm. What that item is can not be clearly identified.

Boise Police Chief Explains Surveillance Recording

On February 14, Idaho 2 News was the first to confirm the existence of a recording made by city hall security cameras, which shows former mayor Brent Coles, police chief Don Pierce and two other city employees carrying allegedly stolen property into city hall. At that time we ran a portion of an interview Idaho 2 News anchor Jeff Ray did with the chief in which he explained what he was doing.

Now that we've obtained the recording, we are re-publishing those remarks along with more of the interview.

Ray: "The city hall surveillance camera video system recorded you returning items - city property - to city hall."

Chief: "I don't think that's correct."

Ray: "You don't think it's correct? How do you explain it? The desks.The filing cabinets. You with the mayor and Suzanne (the former mayor's special assistant) returning items to city hall?"

Chief: "Well, I will say this. Some of it needs to remain for the purposes of the criminal investigation. But I will tell you this. At the end of the day, you will find that I cooperated fully with the investigators for the attorney general's office, and that I did what any other police officer would do if they found property that was of concern or unexplained. It was inventoried. And there are two tapes. The second tape would show me and the investigators for the attorney general's office carrying those items out of the building. So I did what any other good police officer would do. I followed the law and conducted an appropriate investigation."

Jeff: "You know chief as a citizen, a friend of mine calls up and says, 'Hey, you know what? I have a filing cabinet I want to return to the Smiths' house down the street.' And I have reasonable cause to believe that filing cabinet was stolen, I would expect that the law would require me to pick up the phone, and dial 9-1-1. Why didn't you do that?"

Pierce: "Well Jeff your hypothetical situation, the facts of that don't relate in any way shape or form, and I really do sort of resent the implication that there's some connection to that. You're assuming that I may have known or should have known this property was unaccounted for which is absolutely not the case. These items were in the back of a suburban. I had no idea where they had come from. I had no idea what they were for. They were taken into the office. They were inventoried and I turned them over to the attorney general's office. And you can go park in back of Barrister here and you can watch police officers all day long taking items that are unaccounted for, they take them in, they inventory them and they turn them over to the proper authorities which is exactly what I did in this case."

Jeff: "But doesn't it seem reasonable - it seems awfully odd that the mayor of Boise would ask the police chief to help him carry various items into city hall. Didn't you think that was a little odd?"

Chief: "You do not have the correct facts. I'm putting you on notice."

Ray: "Tell me how I got it wrong. In that specific question, how do I have that wrong?

Chief: "There was a suburban that had some material in it. I was asked by a secretary in the office, this was during the time that I was serving as the acting chief of staff, I was down there for a morning meeting. There was some material in a suburban. We needed to use the suburban for another function. Somebody else had signed up for it for that day, and we wanted to get it cleaned up and there was some items in it, so we brought them in and we stored them. That's the story."

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