Rasmussen: The unconstitutional actions of the Des Moines Police Department
July 5, 2020
The Black Lives Matter protests and events are still happening regularly in Iowa, as they should because this movement is far from over. No real change is being made in our state and our governor is full of empty promises. While this fight is already an uphill battle, the Des Moines Police Department is aiming to make it worse.
It’s been recently released through organizers and sources that cops are going undercover at events and recording protesters. It was also mentioned that cops are going to make things worse for protesters, without further detail surrounding what that means.
Both pieces of intel have been coming to fruition. Recently, protesters went to the Capitol to hold Governor Kim Reynolds accountable for her promise of restoring the voting rights of people with previous felony charges. She still hasn’t signed it into law, leaving Iowa the last state in the nation that completely bans voting for former felons. This event started at 1 p.m., and by 1:30 p.m., cops were arresting people. I’ve watched multiple live videos of the protesters who were there, and they were met with a horde of cops and state troopers for no other reason but intimidation. Officers were violently pushing, shoving and detaining protesters. One officer was caught on film laughing at a protester who was asking about the chaos that came out of nowhere, exclaiming that we, the people, pay their salaries. Two unmarked “officers” in regular clothes, no badge, no body cameras and armored vests with weaponry refused to release their identities to the protesters who were asking. Videos and pictures also show law enforcement with papers that had pictures of protesters’ faces and identifiers like tattoos so they could target those people, specifically the movement’s organizers.
From the Iowa Informer, “For weeks, protesters had been meeting inside the Statehouse during the afternoon without incidents of violence. However, on Wednesday, law enforcement appeared with printed-out notices and images looking to arrest two Black Lives Matter organizers present at a protest outside a Des Moines Hy-Vee on June 20. Jassma’ray and Lashon Winfield were both detained in a conference room at the Capitol as protesters’ questions about why they were being held went unanswered. Jassma’ray and Winfield were charged with criminal mischief in the first degree, as Black Lives Matter organizer Matthew Bruce was when he willingly turned himself in on June 24 over the Hy-Vee protest.”
“All Lives Matter” regurgitator and spokesman for the DMPD Paul Parizek created a narrative that made it seem like multiple protesters began assaulting the police, which is why the madness transpired. There was body camera footage released that shows an officer who put himself in the middle of a group of protesters while trying to herd them up for an unknown reason. Only one protester appeared to even remotely get physical with that officer—that protester alone should have faced those consequences, not the 17 different people that did.
From the Iowa Informer again, “… he [Parizek] wrote in a message posted to Facebook Wednesday along with the video of the scene. The status continues in a tone that is at turns defensive and self-serving. As with other protests involving police violence in Des Moines, Parizek’s recounting of events includes claims that directly contradict the accounts of protesters and other eyewitnesses at the scene. The Facebook statement claims an officer had his firearm taken from him and others placed in chokeholds by protesters, which is not shown in the video and accuses protesters of sole responsibility for violence despite clear evidence of police escalation.”
In response to the unmarked “police officers” at the event, Parizek took to his Twitter account and claimed that even though the “officers” had no badge, uniform or other law enforcement identifiers, the patch on their vests that read “POLICE” should be enough for citizens to accept that they’re police.
A trusted friend of mine who was trying to follow dispersal orders was snatched up by the police for literally abiding by their request. The individual suffered injury because of how aggressive the cops were after other protesters were trying to de-arrest the person. The individual asked the cop what they should have done differently since they were walking away, doing nothing illegal and following orders and the cop told them they should have thought about before even attending the event. “You already started shit and we’re ending it,” the cop said, per the source. The individual had to sit in the COVID-infested jail with a “failure to disperse” charge even though, again, they were following the orders by walking away and dispersing. This is one of the many incidents that have been happening.
Might I add, it’s our constitutional right to peacefully assemble, but the DMPD is tired of being held accountable as a police force so now they’re turning Iowa into a militarized police state, infringing upon our rights and freedoms and using scare tactics. They are trying to scare us into submission to stop exercising our constitutional rights that expose the wrongdoings of officers in our own city.
So DMPD, while you continuously build your database of our identifiers and our faces, keep arresting protesters for simply protesting, amp up the force and violence used on peaceful protesters, and dig an even bigger grave of your malfeasance, the gap of “good cops” shrinks more and more every day. You have not been protecting and serving the public, you are protecting and serving the interest of a fake narrative while wielding the blind trust members of this community instill in you and manipulating it to your advantage.
While you laugh in the face of protesters, remember that we are in fact the taxpayers who fund your salaries and your ludicrous budgets that fund your “killology” training but leave you ill-equipped to adequately deal with situations that don’t require force or violence. But there’s more—because of the public outcry surrounding DMPD using excessive force on peaceful protesters, DMPD has announce that they’ll be investigating themselves. What could possibly go wrong? It surely makes sense that they should be investigating themselves because it’ll be totally objective and unbiased, right?
We will continue to protest and utilize our rights to free speech, freedom to assemble and freedom of the press. “Our masters have not heard the people’s voice for generations and it is much, much louder than they care to remember.”
Resources for protesters:
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS – Protesters’ Rights
What to do if you are stopped by police, immigration agents, or the FBI
If you can, please donate to:
