Iowa House bill would give more protections to police

DES MOINES — Iowa police officers would have more protection from losing their certification and from investigations under a bill advanced by Iowa House lawmakers Tuesday.

The bill builds on the “Back the Blue” law lawmakers passed in 2021. That law penalizes local governments that selectively enforce state or local laws and raised the penalties for illegal protesting and rioting.

The law, which lawmakers passed in response to the large protests following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, prohibited cities, counties and local law enforcement agencies from having policies that discouraged the enforcement of certain laws.

The new bill, House Study Bill 738, was advanced unanimously by a three-member House subcommittee Tuesday. It is eligible for a vote in the House Ways and Means Committee.

Campus police

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Skylar Limkemann of Tiffin, an attorney for the Iowa Fraternal Order of Police, which supports the bill, said the 2021 law was initially inspired by issues on Iowa’s college campuses, but university police were left out of the final bill.

“One of the issues that came up at that time was officers were being told that they could not enforce state, local or federal laws,” he said. “... The problem was targeting the situation that was going on on our college campuses because of the unique environment that our law enforcement officers there have to enforce state and local laws.”

But lobbyists for the Iowa Board of Regents, which govern the three public universities, have doubts about the bill.

Keith Saunders, a representative for the Board of Regents, said the campus decided to pull officers back when protesters were spray-painting university buildings in 2020 out of concern for the officers’ safety.

“We believe the language requiring our sworn police officers on all three campuses to enforce the laws of Iowa is redundant,” said Carolann Jensen, another regents lobbyist. “We believe we already do that and have the power to do that.”

Officer certification

The bill would narrow the situations in which the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy can revoke an officer’s certification and give the academy the discretion to privately discipline an officer for misconduct.

Current law says that the state Law Enforcement Academy must decertify an officer who is fired for “serious misconduct,” which is defined as “improper or illegal actions” in connection with the officer’s duties.

“What is improper? That is very subjective, and, frankly, folks have weaponized the processes to try to go after police officers' certification, not only here in Iowa but across the country," Limkemann said.

The academy does have the option to revoke an officer’s certification in some cases without the officer having committed an illegal act. The bill also would allow the academy to, in those cases, privately reprimand an officer or agency without a public revocation or suspension of certification.

Brady Carney, director of the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy, said the rules would create additional cost and work for the academy, and that giving the academy the authority to punish police agencies would go beyond its current charge.

He also said the bill would make it harder for the academy to enforce its certification process, shifting more of the responsibility onto the local agencies.

“This bill specifically makes it harder to appropriately deal with bad actors in law enforcement,” he said. “The academy council is the entity that grants the certification. They grant a peace officer certification in the state of Iowa. And this bill puts a lot of responsibility, a lot of onus on the individual law enforcement agencies.”

Internal investigations

The bill also would alter how investigations into officer misconduct can be conducted by a law enforcement agency.

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Under the proposal, officers who are the subject of a complaint would have the right to receive a copy of the incident report and video or audio recordings related to the incident in question before being interviewed by internal investigators.

Support for the provision was mixed among law enforcement at the hearing.

Representatives for the Fraternal Order of Police said they supported the provision and likened it to an officer reviewing body camera footage before testifying in a civil or criminal court case.

Dennis McDaniel, the police chief in Johnston and president of the Iowa Police Chiefs Association, said that in some of the department’s more serious investigations, like an office- involved shooting, conducting interviews before officers review footage can be important in determining the facts.

“We have to get into the legal balancing act of that officer making an independent statement, being involved in that, or other officers that were witness to that, and the potential for them to offer testimony that might be altered, based on reviewing the report, reviewing the video,” he said.

Comments: cmccullough@qctimes.com

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