December 7, 2020
Statement read by community members at the Des Moines City Council meeting.
Des Moines City Council, please take notes during the next 30 minutes of agenda items submitted by the public. It should come as no surprise to you all to hear that DMPD and the City of Des Moines are once again being sued for racial profiling and discriminatory policing practices. This is a damning trend that is on display for all to see. For any of you who haven’t paid attention, I’ll give you a quick recap of some of DMPD’s documented harassment and violence toward Black folks in just the last few years: Montray Little and Jared Clinton were paid $75,000 after DMPD racially profiled and harassed them in 2019, Lonnie Porter received a $25,000 settlement after being unlawfully pulled over in 2019, and just this year the city paid a $75,000 settlement to Kimberly Williams after an officer assaulted her 17 year old daughter.
All of the officers implicated in these cases of misconduct are still employed by DMPD and some of them are being litigated once again in ongoing cases. Can you imagine not once, but twice or three times, flagrantly breaking the code of conduct at your job and not being fired by your employer? Josh Mandelbaum, would your law firm continue to employ you if you were found to be bribing judges on not one but multiple occasions? Joe Gatto, would Baratta’s stay open if multiple former employees came forward accusing you of violence toward them? Connie Boesen, would the Iowa State Fair continue to permit your food stand to operate every August if they learned you had been responsible for multiple E. coli outbreaks? I don’t think so.
How is it then that DMPD repeatedly shrugs off these officer violations and refuses to remove the transgressors from their payroll? The truth is, they realize that Iowa law doesn’t require them to have any transparency with the disciplinary actions they take. And, most importantly, the police force has a culture of no accountability for wrongdoing. In fact, history has proven that racial profiling and excessive use of force are actually built into the way DMPD chooses to operate.
Currently, there are cases being brought against DMPD officers and the City of Des Moines by Jared Clinton, Courtney Saunders, as well as Domeco Fugenschuh. All three of them are Black citizens of Des Moines who were stopped by DMPD officers without proper legal justification and were further victims of the racist pretextual stop system that officers in Des Moines have used to pin fabricated charges on Black folks in our communities for decades.
Jared Clinton already was made to endure a traumatic run-in with repeat offender Officer Kyle Thies back in 2018 that went viral and cost the city $75,000. In October of 2019, Officers Brian Minnehan, Ryan Steinkamp, and Ryan Garrett pulled Jared over again because they claimed they couldn’t read his temporary tag that was placed in his rear window where it needed to be. This is not a valid reason to stop a motorist. These officers then manipulated the situation, claiming they smelled marijuana, searching Clinton’s car, and charging him with possession of a controlled substance. They later dropped this charge, begging the question why those officers charged him with marijuana possession in the first place. In short, three White officers racially profiled Jared Clinton, again, carried out another discriminatory pretextual stop, and took Jared to jail without any legitimate cause to do so.
Unfortunately, you’ll have to get used to hearing these officers' names. Domeco Fugenschuh is currently bringing a lawsuit against the very same Officer Ryan Steinkamp and Officer Brian Minnehan involved in Jared’s unjust arrest and there are striking similarities between the suits. In 2018, Officers Steinkamp and Minnehan pulled over Domeco, claiming he had cut off another driver. As body cam footage reveals, they violently pulled him from his car without explanation, handcuffed him, and knocked his head into the door frame as they put him in the police vehicle. And, how do you think they justified this arrest, given it is not legal to arrest someone for a mere traffic violation? That’s right, these two decided to fabricate the presence of a controlled substance again, charging Domeco with possession of weed. The issue is, there was no marijuana shake on the floor of Domeco’s car and the scale that Officers Steinkamp and Minnehan put in their report was in fact just a portable phone charger, leading the Polk County prosecutors to drop the possession charge a few months later. Not only are Steinkamp and Minnehan racist, not only are they liars, but they are exceptionally inept liars.
It’s important to note that in 2015, it was discovered that two Des Moines Police Officers planted methamphetamine on an individual in order to make an arrest. There is a precedent at DMPD for lying about the presence of drugs and even planting drugs in order to achieve an arrest.
The last ongoing case I have to share with you tonight is against the very same Officer Kyle Thies who was responsible for harassing Jared Clinton and Montray Little in 2019. This time, Courtney Saunders was the victim of Officer Thies’ racial profiling habits. Again, a white DMPD officer stopped a Black male without proper reasoning. In Officer Thies’ words, the turn Courtney made in his car “didn’t feel right”. Of course, after Thies and his partner detained Courtney and prepared to issue him a ticket for parking too near a fire hydrant, they decided to look around and see if they could allege any more severe violations of the law. They settled on writing Courtney a ticket for an open liquor bottle in his backseat, despite the fact that he was completely sober when tested on the scene.
Though Officer Thies attempted to once again burden a young, innocent Black man with unfounded charges, Judge Heather Dickinson found Courtney Saunders not guilty of both the traffic violation and the open liquor bottle violation. It’s almost as if the police officer was searching for ways to incriminate Saunders. Food for thought. Judge Dickinson described her decision on Courtney’s case with these words, “The court did not find Officer Thies’ testimony credible, and numerous times during his testimony the court observed that he appeared to be smirking.”
City Council members, do you remember earlier this year when you all were presented with an opportunity to completely prohibit pretextual stops and you chose instead to leave it up to the police officers to use their own discretion on what discrimination looks like? Are you all starting to notice how your decisions have dire consequences for the citizens you’re supposed to be representing? These are stories of your community members’ lives being permanently damaged, not trivial anecdotes to go in one ear and out the other. You need to pass a complete ban on pretextual stops so that Black folks in the Des Moines community won’t continue to be subjected to the racist pastimes of bored and hyper-aggressive Des Moines police officers.
Since you all neglected to create a Citizen Oversight Committee that has the power to investigate and adjudicate on complaints of racial profiling this summer, all accountability falls to Chief Wingert and DMPD in instances like these when members of our community like Jared, Domeco, and Courtney have their rights violated. It seems, given many of your statements and actions throughout the last year, that you all have quite the idealized impression of what our police department is in this city. You seem to think DMPD is the one police department in the nation that is free of bias and functions to protect more than just wealthy White property owners. If those presumptions were true, Chief Wingert would have terminated his officers when they repeatedly and blatantly profiled members of the Des Moines community based on their race.
Rather, he and his media mouthpiece, Paul Parizek, have heaped praise on the guilty officers. After Sgt. Greg Wessels pepper sprayed and assaulted Khy’La Williams, a 17 year old Black girl, Parizek had this to say, “Sgt. Wessels is a respected 31 year veteran of the Des Moines Police Department, having served in nearly every unit within the department.” And, Wessels continues to hold his position with the Department. This is despite his unconscionable actions toward a teenager and the nearly $900,000 he has cost the city collectively between the Williams lawsuit and a previous case brought against him for another disturbing assault on a man in 2013.
In addition to the two cases I’ve already mentioned that are presently being brought against Officers Steinkamp and Minnehan, they also were the subjects of a racial profiling lawsuit that was filed in 2018. When Paul Parizek was asked to comment at the time he said, “They’re great cops who have served our neighborhoods professionally.” These same two officers were responsible for the fatal shooting of Luke Swann last year. Swann, a 36 year old Black resident of the Indianola Hills neighborhood, was thought to have been armed. Yet, there are no eyewitnesses to corroborate when or why Officers Steinkamp, Minnehan, and their partner began shooting. These were the comments of Parizek following the killing, ““They're three of the people that we know we can count on to serve the community well.”
Which community does Parizek continue to refer to that these officers are apparently serving? Is community exclusive to those who wear badges and holster a gun every morning in this case? I don’t normally associate assaulting a 17 year old girl, repeated demonstrations of racism, and the killing of a community member with the concept of service. What does it tell us that even those officers who have so obviously neglected their supposed duty to serve by abusing their post are still lauded by their superiors and kept on the force? It seems only logical to assume that this is the case because none of the actions in question are in any way antithetical to how DMPD operates across the board.
The only conclusion that can be drawn is that Chief Dana Wingert and his cronies are well aware that their simple existence as a police department is dependent upon perpetuating racism. In fact, they make it quite clear that they intend to continue peddling hate from East to West across the city, unless a certain city council that has jurisdiction over them were to take serious action to put an end to the terror they represent for People of Color throughout Des Moines.
This is exactly why this council has heard demands for months on end that steps are taken now to “Defund DMPD”. This is not a plea that officers with despicable track records like Thies, Minnehan, Steinkamp, Wessels, and Grimes are terminated, though that is also necessary. This is a call for the complete defunding of a police department which places targets on Black folks in Des Moines. It’s a call to completely defund a police department whose leaders have made it abundantly clear that they tolerate and even incentivize the consistent violation of Black community members’ civil rights. It is also a call to Decriminalize Marijuana. This drug is regularly weaponized by the Des Moines Police Department against People of Color throughout the city. Marijuana should no longer represent criminal charges or the threat of incarceration.
During just the last few years, over $1,000,000 has been doled out by the city as a consequence of lawsuits that demonstrated the racism and incompetence of DMPD officers. Yet, the Des Moines City Council has turned a blind eye. In the middle of a crippling pandemic, the three ongoing cases against DMPD and the city also pose a potential sacrifice of funds that could be aiding healthcare centers, those with vulnerable housing realities, and unemployed members of our community. Instead, that money will serve as a meager compensation for yet another wave of victims of our violently prejudiced police department.
Last year, you all approved a bloated budget of $70,000,000 for this police department that employs, arms, and protects proven racists. That is 39% of the entire City budget and by far the largest police budget in the state. On December 22nd, the conversation will begin again on what portion of the city’s budget will go to DMPD. We are calling upon you to Defund the Des Moines Police Department as you finalize the 2021 Budget. Don’t be mistaken, a decision to continue financing DMPD will not be a simple expression of your difference of opinion. It will be an erasure of Jared, Montray, Khy’La, Lonnie, Domeco, and Courtney’s stories and an investment in hate.