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Bill addressing law enforcement at state universities moves ahead • Iowa Capital Dispatch [1]
['Brooklyn Draisey', 'More From Author', '- March']
Date: 2024-03
A House subcommittee has passed a bill that includes protections for law enforcement at state universities and changes policies for investigations into officer misconduct and decertification.
House Study Bill 738 would bar state universities from adopting or enforcing policies that would prohibit police from enforcing local, state or municipal laws. The bill would have the attorney general investigate complaints made against a university for violations. Laws detailing the process after a complaint has been found to be valid for local entities would be made to include regents institutions.
If the bill becomes law, state universities that have been found in civil court to have “intentionally” discouraged or barred the enforcement of laws would be denied state funds for the fiscal year in which the determination occurred, as it is with local entities.
Speakers at the subcommittee meeting brought up protests and riots that took place in 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police as reason to ensure officers are able to enforce laws both on and off campus. Iowa Fraternal Order of Police attorney Skylar Limkemann said legislation passed in 2021, known as the “Back the Blue” law, included restrictions on municipalities stopping officers from enforcing the law, but left out the state universities.
West Liberty police officer and former University of Iowa officer Don Strong said when he and other officers were policing protests at the University of Iowa, they were pulled away and told not to enforce the law as protesters damaged state property.
“This bill has been around for four years, we’re trying to make sure that the regents officers have the same rights under the law to enforce both state and federal local laws,” Limkemann said.
Iowa Board of Regents representative Keith Saunders said police were pulled off the line to protect their safety as thousands of protesters marched and spray painted buildings.
Carolann Jensen, another representative for the Iowa Board of Regents, said the sections of the bill requiring universities to let law enforcement enforce laws on campus and provide accommodations for officers injured on the job are redundant, and having the attorney general handle violation complaints would create a conflict, as the attorney general already defends the universities in cases when necessary.
The legislation would allow officers under administrative investigation for a filed complaint to request the incident report and any audio or video footage from the incident. It also would remove the word “improper” from code when discussing decertification of officers due to “serious misconduct,” leaving it to be defined as illegal actions that include conviction for a felony, bribes and excessive force “in violation of the law,” which would also be added in.
It would also allow the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy, which handles certification of officers, to privately reprimand an officer or agency for violations.
Iowa Law Enforcement Academy President Brady Carney said these changes would place additional pressures on the academy both financially and in its work policing its own certifications, making it harder in general to police bad actors.
City of Waukee lobbyist Doug Struyk also brought up concerns around allowing officers to review their body camera footage and incident reports, saying a goal in interviewing an officer about an incident is to get their perspective and to learn what was going on in their mind at the time.
“When you interview someone, you don’t walk in and say here’s our entire case, please review this, and then we’d like to talk to you about that,” Struyk said.
Subcommittee Chair Rep. Brooke Boden, R-Indianola, said there is a lot of good intent put into this legislation, and that going forward, she and others will work with each other to clarify language and address concerns.
“I think it’s very important to protect our regents law enforcement officers equally in making sure that they have state protection,” Boden said. “This is an extensive bill that will require some more conversation, but I would like to see it move forward and for all of us to work together.”
The bill moves ahead to the House Ways and Mean Committee.
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