I'm a general contractor, on a job for parks & rec right now doing some improvements on a park near downtown Boise. We always put a fence up around our work area.

Today a guy came over to the fence and was watching us, not uncommon, then called one of the employees over.

Employee walks over, says hi, guy tells him that he can't make his mortgage and if anyone else pisses him off he's taking his rifle up the nearest bell tower and killing people until he's stopped. Employee reports it to us and says the guy seemed completely serious.

Boise PD is called, we follow the guy to his car at distance, and point it out as he's leaving and BPD is arriving. Lady officer follows him.

I call for an update an hour later and am told they watched him but didn't make contact. No crime occurred so no contact is warranted.

This is a bullshit line, I'm assuming BPD doesn't want to come in contact with anyone right now. What this guy did is called homicidal ideation and usually results in a 72hr involuntary hold while the patient is evaluated. The fact that he had a "plan" (vs. some homeless lunatic ranting at a garbage can) makes the medical pros take it a bit more seriously. Contact was warranted but wasn't made.

So my guys are on heightened alert and bringing rifles to work from now on. I'll be keeping an AR pistol in my truck as well. We're in a public park and very exposed.

My thoughts: there are plenty of people around just barely keeping it together on a daily basis. Shut down everything, disable the normal routine and the fragile ones among us are going to start snapping.

I don't know if the governor's office realizes this, but it's a very real consequence of a shelter in place order; the longer it goes on the more people are going to do weird shit.

You all are probably already in watch your six mode but today made it a bit more real for me and my guys.

It doesn't fix things, but damn this state and the culture here sure does give us the upper hand in dealing with them.

Someone in California/Washington wouldn't have made this post.

Long gun normally travels with me anyways to work, but with the shelter in place being put into effect instead of a simple H harness with a couple mags, I have transitioned to dragging armor along with a chest rig mounted to it. Pack with food/water/items to get home via different methods if roads get blocked up. Also being that I work nights, my PVS14 has been along for the ride as well.

This weekend will probably be used to refine what needs to be packed, and anything I may have missed. Possibly breaking out the sewing machine and making some things.

While it still seems people are friendly and trying to keep everyday functions normal, there is definitely a vibe that everyone is on alert and a little more tense from what I have seen so far.

Amen to that.

We hadn't even talked about guns before this, but a guy threatening a mass shooting naturally brought up the subject of self defense.

Turns out everyone there carries and almost everyone had an AR.

I love Idaho.

I’m not taking the gravity of the situation lightly but I will say that he picked the wrong time to carry that out. Everyone is locked up inside.

I wonder if he was the Caldwell guy.

Who's the Caldwell guy?

Some guy in Caldwell got into a shooting match with the cops.

There's ring doorbell footage where you can hear a crap ton of firing. I caught the ring footage on ktvb, there's a write up on it on their site. Probably have it on other locals, but ktvb is the one I stream to roku.

https://www.ktvb.com/mobile/article/news/crime/four-officers-on-leave-man-hospitalized-after-officer-involved-shooting-in-caldwell/277-9755b76a-04de-490e-a656-7c0a142524cd

I was always taught to stand outside in the open when I hear gunshots.

Here again is another case where something should have been done at the onset, but nothing is done until the crime scene tape is being taken down.  I hope BPD is willing to answer for their lack of action God forbid if something happens.  This is what kills me about some of the police I've seen around here.  They'll jam up somone on a bullshit window tint or traffic violation but they won't take terroristic threats seriously?  

That lady cop could have called another unit over, made contact, asked what this guys issue was and if he needed help point him in the right direction to get him help.  At the very least she could have done a field interview card and he would be on their radar.  If the officers would have seen any signs mental instability they should have detained him and got him evaluated for whatever was wrong.  

I hate to Monday morning quarterback this but in all honesty BPD could really be in the shit if this guy does something.  We've already seen one case where that guy went off his nut in Horseshoe Bend and killed that boy.  Just wait if this pandemic really takes hold, people are going to go off once they get hungry and desperate.