Civil Rights Commission restricts details of case

DES MOINES - The clues were there.

A town of roughly 4,000 people? Check.

Situated in a county with a large Latino population? Check.

Recently involved with the Iowa Civil Rights Commission over an accusation that at least one of its police officers was racially profiling Hispanic motorists?

Well, that was the mystery.

At least until Friday, when Sergeant Bluff Mayor Dale Petersen confirmed that the Woodbury County community recently reached an agreement with the commission.

It's something that he probably would rather not talk about. After all, the commission-brokered settlement between the city and the still-anonymous person who complained was supposed to be confidential. It would likely have remained so if not for Petersen's willingness to confirm the information to a reporter who called him Friday afternoon with a few questions.

In an April 13 news release about the settlement, the Civil Rights Commission did not identify the communitybut said it involved a “police department (that) is located in a town with approximately 4,000 residents in an Iowa county with a high Latino population.”

Based on those particulars, there are 22 Iowa towns that were suspect.

Sergeant Bluff was clearly one, but so were others, such as Eagle Grove, Hampton and West Liberty. The announcement of the settlement also said the police department admitted no guilt.

“It's kind of like pick your poison,” said Beth Townsend, executive director of the commission. “You don't want to be too broad and just say ‘a town,' but you can't be too narrow. The parties agreed that this is the best we could do.”

Of the dozens of complaints that go to the Iowa Civil Rights Commission each year, only a handful are ever made public.

“I don't know what the problem is that they see with it,” said Mike Boyd, city administrator for the town of Eagle Grove. The city of 3,583 is in Wright County, which has a Hispanic population of 9.6 percent, according to the 2010 Census.

Boyd confirmed Eagle Grove was not involved in the case and feels uneasy that folks might think it was.

“I feel that it should be transparent,” he said. “We try to make our government as transparent as possible.”

State law says civil rights complaints become public only if they go to a hearing or are transferred to the court system.

Contacted earlier in the week about whether his community was involved, West Liberty City Administrator Chris Ward said, “This is the first time I've heard of this.” West Liberty, population 3,736, is in Muscatine County. The county is 15.9 percent Hispanic.

Ward said it seems it would be easier just to say who was involved in the complaint, but “those decisions are made at a higher authority. I can tell you at a local level, we do everything we can to be transparent.”

Townsend said there are practical reasons, not just statutory ones, that favor keeping the details of cases quiet.

“The goal of the commission is to help the parties come to a resolution,” she said.

She said the threat of going public with, say, the name of a police department, makes that department more inclined to strike a deal in order to keep its name out of the media.

People who file complaints often want their name kept out of the public realm, too. She said, for example, someone who is looking for a job would rather not let employers know that he or she had filed a civil-rights complaint against a previous employer lest they be seen as a troublemaker.

How transparent?

“I'm predisposed to ‘if in doubt, let it out,'” said Bill Monroe, special adviser on government transparency to Gov. Terry Branstad. “But these issues always have two sides, or more.”

Tim Albrecht, spokesman for Branstad, said, “The governor supports the law, and he supports Director Townsend.”

Ben Stone, executive director of the Iowa branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, said what the Civil Rights Commission is doing is similar to what the court system allows in some liability cases - namely, sealing a settlement even though it's been fully adjudicated.

“In product liability cases, it's a big problem because you have companies reach a settlement privately over a complaint of a product deficiency that other consumers never find out about,” Stone said. “In these cases, surely the people who live in the town have a vested interest in knowing what is going on in their community.”

Monroe said although he's not an expert on the ins and outs of civil rights complaints, he does feel sympathy toward the towns that find themselves under suspicion because of their demographics.

“Sometimes it baffles me,” he said, “on why government thinks we would be better served by having something kept confidential when it seems that we'd be better served seeing the contents of the settlement.”

Sioux City Journal reporter Molly Montag contributed to this story.

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