Following months of public criticism of a small team of officers charged with leading de-escalation training for the Des Moines Police Department that included two officers named in excessive force and racial profiling lawsuits, the city will hire a third party to run its future training sessions.
In the middle of a public-comment period at Monday’s Des Moines City Council meeting, Mayor Frank Cownie announced the city is in the process of negotiating a contract with the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that provides resources for law enforcement units across the country. Our current de-escalation training session has come to a close and we are announcing a partnership with PERF, Cownie said. That isn’t ready to put on the council agenda, but I think the general public should know that’s where we’re going for our next stage of training.
We listened to our courageous heroes in law enforcement and we took action. We rely on these men and women every day to keep us safe. .
“It s our job as Iowa legislators to minimize that risk (to police officers) as much as possible so that more law enforcement officers can make it back home to their families safely.
Dear Rep. Klein,
Like you, I want police officers to get home safely. Certainly their jobs involve risks. The shooting death of Sgt. Jim Smith, a 27-year veteran of the Iowa State Patrol, while trying to arrest a suspect at his Grundy Center home last month, is a tragic example.
April 18, 2021 GMT
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) Des Main police are facing pushback after putting a sergeant who has been disciplined for excessive force on a five-person team that leads de-escalation training.
City Manager Scott Sanders defended the decision to make Sgt. Michael Fong a trainer this past week in an email that the Des Moines Register obtained through a records request. He wrote that he and Police Chief Dana Wingert met privately with “sincerely concerned residents,” but he told the mayor and council members in the email that he didn’t find their arguments persuasive.
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Members of the advocacy group Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement and others have repeatedly and publicly asked that Fong and another officer, Sean O’Neill, be removed from their roles in the department’s de-escalation training. O’Neill was named in a racial profiling lawsuit that the city paid $25,000 to settle in 2018.