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Lawsuits over fatal police shootings move to federal court, with one city arguing for secrecy [1]

['Clark Kauffman', 'More From Author', '- July']

Date: 2023-07-10

Two Iowa cities are facing federal lawsuits over fatal police shootings, with one of the cities now seeking to keep secret information on the case that is either confidential or potentially “embarrassing.”

The City of Davenport is being sued for the October 2021 shooting of 37-year Bobby Jo Klum as he walked through a residential neighborhood with a BB gun pointed at his own head. The lawsuit, originally filed in state court, was moved last week to federal court due to constitutional issues in the case.

The City of Waterloo, meanwhile, is being sued for the November 2021 shooting of 41-year-old Brent Boggess during an attempted traffic stop. After being shot four times as he sat in his truck, Boggess allegedly said to officers, “Dude, I’m unarmed,” got out of his vehicle and collapsed on the ground. As with the Davenport case, the lawsuit filed by Boggess’ family was moved last week from state court to federal court.

In the Waterloo case, the lawsuit alleges a police officer attempted to pull over Boggess’ truck shortly after 1 a.m., on Nov. 16, 2021. Boggess stopped and talked to the officer who initiated the stop, but then drove away toward his home with the officer in pursuit. Eventually, seven other police officers responded to the situation.

Boggess was eventually stopped in an alley where officers deployed stop-sticks on the pavement in front of his truck and a police car pulled in behind Boggess. After Boggess rolled down his window to talk to the police, one of the officers allegedly attempted to de-escalate the situation and said to him, “Hey, stop your car. Come out here and let me talk to you. You can’t act like this, man.”

The lawsuit alleges that body-camera footage shows Boggess telling police he had “mental health issues.” At about that same time, Officer Nick Weber allegedly entered the alley, driving toward the front of Boggess’ truck and over the stop-sticks deployed by his fellow officers. Boggess then pulled forward and the two vehicles collided at a low rate of speed, according to the lawsuit.

Officer Kenneth Schaaf, standing near the passenger side of Boggess’ truck, then fired five rounds into the vehicle, with four of the bullets striking Boggess. At the time, the police officers who had been conversing with Boggess were standing near the driver’s side of the truck and were in Schaaf’s line of fire, according to the lawsuit.

Bodycam footage allegedly shows Boggess getting out of his truck, saying, “Dude, I’m unarmed,” and then collapsing to the ground.

Schaaf and the city are being sued for wrongful death and use of excessive force. The defendants have denied any wrongdoing.

Waterloo seeks order to keep records secret

In state-court filings, the City of Waterloo has sought a protective order that would keep confidential certain documents produced in the case that the city says might prove to be “privileged, sensitive and/or embarrassing.”

Attorneys for the Boggess family have resisted that request and argued the city’s request for a protective order “is nothing short of pre-existing gag order violating every concept of public-record law.”

Noting that the city has released to the public an eight-page report from the county attorney clearing the officers of any wrongdoing, attorneys for the Boggess family stated the prosecutor’s report “patently misstates the facts of the case” and called it “the height of hypocrisy” for the city to “put out information intentionally designed to mislead the public” and then argue that the release of information about “what really happened” might taint the pool of potential jurors.

“This lawsuit was brought by the plaintiffs in order to expose wrongdoing on the part of the defendants,” the family’s lawyers argued in court filings, “with the understanding that such exposure will make it less likely that similar wrongful conduct will be repeated by the defendants in the future.”

Lawyers for the city have told the court the police are not attempting “to conceal their conduct” and that the city is only trying to keep secret records that are either designated by law as confidential or would “violate the privacy interests of the litigants and witnesses.” The city notes that the plaintiffs are seeking access to Officer Schaaf’s personnel file, and that under Iowa law, the personnel files of police officers are exempt from state laws requiring the public disclosure of government records.

A judge had yet to rule on the protective-order issue before the case was transferred to federal court.

Davenport lawsuit calls shooting ‘murder’

In the Davenport case, the lawsuit filed by Klum’s family alleges that on Oct. 13, 2021, the police went to Klum’s home in an attempt to execute a warrant for his arrest for a suspected parole violation, at which point Klum ran from the house.

He then walked through the surrounding neighborhood holding a BB gun to his head as police surrounded the area. He was allegedly walking away from officers, past a group of bystanders who were recording video of the incident, and was still holding the gun to his own head when Officer Mason Roth opened fire and killed him.

The lawsuit alleges Roth “murdered a vulnerable, emotionally distraught man holding a BB gun to his own head while all other reasonable officers in the area took measures to de-escalate the situation … There can be no dispute what happened because it was all captured on numerous cruiser and body cameras, along with the recording from a number of bystanders.”

The lawsuit alleges that in exonerating Roth from any criminal wrongdoing, Scott County Attorney Michael Walton stated that while Klum never pointed the BB gun at anyone other than himself, the shooting was justified because of “how quickly the direction of the gun could change.”

The lawsuit argues that “if that was the actual legal standard to be applied, then anyone carrying a weapon could automatically be shot and killed at any time by law enforcement officers.”

Roth and the city are being sued for use of wrongful death through negligence, excessive force in violation of the Iowa Constitution, denial of due process.

Attorneys for the city have denied any wrongdoing by police and argued that “the use of force on a repeat felon who fled into a residential area while armed with a handgun to avoid going back to jail” was justified.

“Davenport police officers attempted to use less than lethal force (rubber bullets) on the felon, but that method did not stop him,” lawyers for the city told the court. “As the felon walked near a group of innocent bystanders with his handgun in hand, Officer Mason Roth used lethal force to neutralize the threat.”

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