Criminal records increasingly forgiven in hiring Iowa officers

Pocahontas Police Chief Alex Leu has received officer applications from people who have had their driver’s licenses taken away, people who have convictions for domestic violence, people who have been to prison for robbery, even people who have an active arrest warrant against them when they apply.

He doesn’t hire any of these people, and is surprised at their lack of understanding about the rules for hiring police officers in Iowa. Under Iowa Code administrative rules, no one with a felony or any other criminal conviction representing “moral turpitude” may be hired as a law enforcement officer or a reserve officer in Iowa.

“Iowa’s system is extremely tight. If you have any crime of moral turpitude … then you’re precluded from becoming a law enforcement officer until you’re vetted by the (Iowa Law Enforcement) Academy,” Leu said.

But exceptions to the rule can be granted by the 13-member Iowa Law Enforcement Academy Council, which is made up of representatives from state law enforcement organizations, representatives from police departments throughout the state and citizen representatives. And as police agencies around the state face challenges in attracting applications and filling officer vacancies, records show requests for waivers — and the council’s approval of them — has been growing.

In 2018, only three requests were made, and only one was granted. But by 2022, 11 requests were both made and granted. And so far in 2023, the council has heard 15 requests and granted 12 of them. Most came from departments in rural areas.

The officers granted waivers have convictions ranging from things like fifth-degree theft and simple assault, to more serious convictions like arson and burglary.

However, publicly available council meeting minutes from 2018 to 2023, which The Gazette reviewed, are not always clear about the severity of the crime in question. For example, a description may state a conviction was for theft, but not say what degree of theft. Court documents are not available for many of these convictions because they have been expunged or aren’t public because the crime happened when the individual was a minor. So it’s not possible to determine the most severe crime granted a waiver by the council during the period.

The increase in waiver requests may be related to the difficulties many police departments are having with recruitment and retention. As the applicant pools get smaller, departments may be more willing to look at hiring candidates with a black mark on their record, according to academy council members.

“Law enforcement is having a hard time getting good quality candidates, for a variety of reasons. … We're not getting the same numbers we used to, and the quality isn't as pronounced as it used to be. And I'm sure that's part of it, is because we just don't get the applicants,” said Ric Martinez, the public safety director of the Nevada, Iowa, Police Department and one of the representatives on the council.

Linn County Sheriff Brian Gardner, who was council chair until 2021 when he left the organization, requested a waiver in 2022 — which was granted — to hire a deputy with a conviction for a minor theft on his record. Gardner agreed requests may be increasing because of the lack of applicants, but said he would still rather hire no one than someone he didn’t trust to be a good officer.

“We are not making job offers to anyone who is a risk to law enforcement, or anyone who is concerning to us,” Gardner said. “We’re not taking any risks. We’re not rolling the dice. All the people we’ve extended offers to, we believe will do very well in their jobs.”

What is moral turpitude?

Moral turpitude is defined in Iowa Code as “an act of baseness, vileness, or depravity in the private and social duties which a person owes to another person or to society in general, contrary to the accepted and customary rule of right and duty between person and person. Moral turpitude is conduct that is contrary to justice, honesty or good morals.”

The code gives a non-exclusive list of criminal convictions that would indicate moral turpitude, including assault or harassment, stalking, any offense during which a weapon was used, income tax evasion, perjury, theft, robbery, burglary, defrauding the government, drug charges, any crime that would put someone on the sex offender registry and conspiracy to commit any of the other crimes listed.

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To deal with the increase in felony and moral turpitude waiver requests — and other increased waiver requests having to do with other rules, like how long an officer must have worked before becoming a certified training instructor — the council recently created a screening committee of some of its members to review simple waiver requests and provide recommendations to the council.

Moral turpitude waivers will be required to be discussed in full council meetings if the crime happened less than five years ago, if there’s more than one conviction on the applicant’s record, or if the crime was beyond a serious misdemeanor.

The council doesn’t take these waivers lightly, and neither do the law enforcement agencies doing the hiring, said Tim Carmody, the current chair of the Law Enforcement Academy Council and the Council Bluffs police chief. Most of the recent requests do not involve felonies, but more often simple misdemeanors.

“There’s a significant filtering process, and because of the recruiting challenges that we’re facing, these issues are coming to us more often than I remember seeing before, trying to find good people to do the job,” Carmody said.

“It's a case-by-case situation that’s based on the totality of the facts they bring to the table. We look for ownership on the part of the person. We looked for a clearer understanding of how this has impacted them and what cost it could have. But we also try and make sure that they're going to live up to the standards that we set.”

There are 13 voting members on the council who are appointed to four-year terms by the Iowa governor and confirmed by the Iowa Senate. They have bimonthly public meetings in the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy building in Johnston. The meetings are also available to the public online over Zoom.

Two waivers received in Pocahontas

Leu, the Pocahontas chief, requested two waivers in 2022 for reserve officers — officers who work on a part-time basis to cover shift gaps when necessary and whose training is not as extensive as that of full-time, certified officers.

Both reserve officers — Courtney Hoover and Christopher Howland — already had been working with the department for a while when they discovered they needed to seek waivers because of minor convictions on their records.

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Both had disclosed their convictions to the previous Pocahontas chief and had been told not to worry about seeking waivers, according to Leu. After Leu became chief, Hoover, who had been with the department since 2021, applied to also work as a reserve deputy with the Pocahontas County Sheriff’s Office. He was told he would need a waiver for a simple assault conviction from 2006.

According to Hoover, now 39, he was 22 when he got into a fight and pushed a man who was drunk and yelling at Hoover’s then-wife. Hoover was charged with and convicted of simple assault. He hasn’t had any criminal charges since then, and has reconciled with the man he assaulted.

After the Sheriff’s Office told Hoover his conviction precluded him from being a reserve deputy, he reached out to Chief Leu to ask if the conviction should have prevented him from working with the police department as well. Leu told him it would, but that he could seek a waiver through the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy Council.

Hoover and Leu started pulling together the information they would need to present to the council, including a letter of recommendation from the victim of the assault. When Howland, who had started as a reserve officer in 2017, heard that Hoover was seeking a waiver, he went to Leu to ask if his conviction — a simple theft count from a bounced check — would also need to be waived for him to continue working.

In 2017, Howland and his then-girlfriend — now his wife — were struggling financially, Howland told The Gazette. They’d almost run out of food for themselves and their toddler, so Howland went to Hy-Vee and bought groceries, paying with a check. But he’d forgotten about a couple of bills that came out of his account automatically and the check bounced. Howland was charged with and convicted of fifth-degree theft. He had just started working as a reserve officer at the time.

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“I wasn’t on very long when that bad check happened. When it happened, I was really worried. I had done some research … and I’d seen that theft was part of the moral turpitude, so I said something to the chief, who was the chief at the time, and he had looked into it and didn’t think that it would fit the amount to make it an issue,” Howland said.

Hoover got on the schedule for the April 2022 council meeting and Howland got on the schedule for the June 2022 meeting. Both waivers were approved.

“Chris is on the (volunteer) fire department, he’s an EMT, he works in public safety at the casino, and he had a bad check. … Courtney is a (volunteer) fire chief and an emergency medical responder. The guys had shown that they had come past it,” Leu said. “If I can get a good person, and they’ve proven that they’re a good person, I feel that we should at least have the opportunity to try to bring them into law enforcement.”

How does the council decide?

When the council is voting on felony or moral turpitude waiver requests, there are a few factors they are supposed to consider, based on the Iowa Administrative Code. These factors include the seriousness of the crime, how long it has been since the crime occurred, the number of criminal convictions the person has had and the level of rehabilitation the person displays.

“In my decision-making process, yes, my personal background, my experience, my 40 years in law enforcement all come into play, but I use the standards that have been set for us as a council,” Carmody said. “Our goal is to help people succeed. It’s not to keep someone out. It’s also a high goal of ours to maintain the integrity of the profession.”

All of the moral turpitude and felony waiver requests that have been denied in the last five years were voted against unanimously by the council. These denied requests included convictions from simple assault and theft to domestic assault, burglary and battery of spouse.

Martinez, the Nevada public safety director, has voted against more waivers in the last five years than anyone else on the council, often as the only contrary vote.

“I’m only one vote, and there are 13 people on the council. We generally have a pretty free and open discussion anytime we have waivers that are brought before us. Some are easy to approve and you just move on. Some are a little more in the middle, a lot of gray area, and those are the ones that we have more discussion on,” Martinez said.

Martinez said that when he’s considering the waivers he focuses on the factors that are outlined in the code, but he also thinks about whether this is an individual who he would be willing to hire for his own police agency.

“If I don’t feel comfortable based on the information that I have, I vote the way I feel comfortable with,” Martinez said. “I may be the only one that says no, or one of two or three people, but I’m OK with that because at least (the chief or hiring officer) has heard my concerns and things that they need to take into consideration. The bottom line is, once you get a waiver, then it’s solely up to the agency to make a decision on whether or not they’re going to hire that person.”

Howland and Hoover both said they felt the council members were thorough with their questions, while also being understanding.

“It is kind of nerve racking, especially if you've never been in that type of situation before. You just don't know how they're going to react. Are they going to say, ‘You screwed up. That's not our fault. You can't be a cop because this is our standard’?” Howland said.

Most of the responsibility of hiring and running criminal background checks falls on the police departments themselves. The Law Enforcement Academy doesn’t run background checks, but relies on the law enforcement agency to find any convictions that might require a rule waiver. Agency background checks usually involve running fingerprints statewide and federally, and searching in the Iowa courts system.

It’s possible for someone to fly under the academy’s radar, like what happened with Hoover and Howland, if a chief doesn’t know the specifics of what needs to be brought to the council. Some convictions could also be missed if they are misdemeanor counts that didn’t require the perpetrator to give a fingerprint or they happened in another state without an easily searchable online court system, according to Leu.

“It’s up to that individual to self-disclose,” Leu said. “Let's say the person came from Nebraska, and Nebraska doesn't have an online public system — and I don't know if they do or don't now — how am I going to know? I can call up, and I would call up, and do a background with the local police department. … Well, they may not have any official record, or if they had a record and then it was deferred to prosecute, we're just not going to know.”

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The council can revoke or suspend an officer’s certification if it is presented with information about a violation that should prevent someone from being an officer. Similar consequences could be faced by an agency head who knowingly chooses not to follow the guidelines by hiring someone with a criminal history without seeking a waiver, according to Carmody. But there have not been any cases of the council revoking an officer’s or a department head’s certification because of a failure to disclose a previous crime, according to Carmody.

Leu said he believes officers who have made mistakes and overcome them tend to be more empathetic toward residents they work with who are making mistakes in their own lives. Carmody agreed, saying he believes the kind of people who choose to grow from their mistakes tend to be more resilient, and can make good officers.

“As law enforcement we meet people in some of the darkest moments of their lives, and some of the most challenging moments, and we need to do that with empathy and respect. But we also need to be able to hold them accountable, because that’s part of the process,” Carmody said. “I do think (mistakes) can — that’s the key word, ‘can’ — help a person grow. Whether they grow or not is up to them as an individual. And that resiliency is critical to our success as deputies and officers.”

Waiver requests in Linn and Johnson since 2018

Cedar Rapids: The Cedar Rapids Police Department made two waiver requests during the June 2023 council meeting. One was for an applicant who had two public intoxication convictions from 2017 and 2018. The other was for an applicant who had a conviction for possession of a weapon while under the influence in 2022. Both waivers were approved.

Robins: The Robins Police Department made a waiver request in the February 2023 council meeting for an applicant who had been convicted of burglary, theft and possession of a controlled substance. The council meeting minutes don’t state the date of the crimes. The waiver was denied.

Linn County: The Linn County Sheriff’s Office made a waiver request in the June 2022 council meeting for an applicant who had a theft conviction from 2009. The waiver was approved.

Johnson County: The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office made a waiver request in the June 2022 council meeting for an applicant who had convictions from 2007 and 2011 for disorderly conduct and public intoxication. The waiver was approved.

Comments: (319) 398-8328; emily.andersen@thegazette.com