Some political leaders use their last year in office to take care of unfinished business, set up their successors for success or show compassion to people who did wrong, by granting pardons and paroles.
Iowa’s outgoing governor, by contrast, seems to be giving the finger to the many Iowans who over the years have pressed for - and achieved - acknowledgment of police excesses and preventive measures. A bill KimReynolds signed last week - House File 2711 - repeals part of a 2020 Iowa state law passed unanimously after George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police. Requiring Iowa police to get training against implicit bias, it came into play after videos revealed a Black man pleading for his mother and his life while officers methodically snuffed it out.
Now, with Reynolds’ signature, the requirement has been scrapped.
In Des Moines, Floyd’s killing and the protests that followed spurred some 208 arrests of people, including journalists, who were not ultimately convicted of anything. Some of those involved tear gas, pepper spray or baton strikes. Twenty four of those arrested filed lawsuits, resulting in $1.4 million in settlements.
Another wake-up call on law-enforcement excesses came later from the shooting deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal ICE officers in Minneapolis. Both Pretti and Good were white citizens in their 30s trying to stand up at protests for the due process rights of immigrants. Both ended up paying for that with their lives.
Instead of ensuring that doesn’t happen in Iowa, Reynolds has had Iowa’s police join ICE in its enforcements. That’s though the evidence has shown many detained were neither criminals nor illegal immigrants as claimed by the Trump administration.
Why are our elected officials turning a blind eye to the harms of law enforcement excesses? Because in the words of Republican Iowa House member Skyler Wheeler, the idea of implicit bias is just “junk science.”
That may be easy for him to say as a white man with power, who has likely never been racially profiled. A 2024 study by the nonprofit Just Voices Iowa found Black drivers in Des Moines were 11 times more likely to be arrested than white ones after getting a speeding ticket. Black people make up only 4 percent of Iowa’s population but are also a quarter of its prison inmates.
I had recently moved to Des Moines when Larry Milton, a Black man, was beaten on the head multiple times with a flashlight by three police oficers in 1992. He needed staples to the head to stop the bleeding. The incident led to years of calls for an impartial civilian review board to oversee complaints against Des Moines police. But the City Council steadfastly resisted that, and a few years ago, the Iowa Legislature banned them statewide.
Retired lawyer Harvey Harrison has the data. Harrison is, like Wheeler, a white man. But his commitment to civil rights, and his persistence in getting the records of Des Moines police actions in 2020 show Wheeler’s remarks to be uninformed.
The police reports underscored the need for better oversight of police actions. But what was supposed to be public information was withheld by the department on the excuse that it contained confidential personnel records. It took Harrison suing for their release in 2022, and the Supreme Court ruling for him three years later.
It turns out that between March 2018 and February, 2025, Des Moines paid $9.76 million to settle cases against the department. The city settled one suit brought by 14 plaintiffs from the 2020 protests alleging assault, battery and malicious prosecution for $800,000. Another resulted in a $100,000 settlement to a photojournalist.
The Des Moines Police Department has been criticized by two independent consulting firms hired by the city after reports showing bias in policing. One of those, 21CP Solutions, made 46 reccomendations after reviewing videos of its actions and finding that police in many cases violated their own policies.
“In our discussions with the Office of Professional Standards, little if any attempt was made to systematically review the complaints or lawsuits for DMPD improvement,” its report said.
This is not meant to single out the Des Moines police or any other Iowa law enforcement agency for criticism. Under its new chief, the DMPD is said to have shown more openness and interest in getting it right. But without strong state requirements for training, transparency and corrective actions when policies weren’t properly followed, Iowa will be spiralling backwards. Every report of a shooting by police will now force us to question whether it was warranted. Our own history shows why we can’t take it on faith that they were.
And now with this law, they’ve banned not just bias training but also reporting requirements and affirmative action plans in multiple state agencies. That’s hardly surprising given Reynolds’ previous closures of all the state offices dedicated to the welfare of various minority and marginalized groups, including women.
In passing and signing HF2711, Iowa’s lawmakers and governor send a message to Iowans of color who were profiled and wrongfully arrested that their mistreatment doesn’t matter. But more broadly, these politicians have signalled - to any of us who care - which side they’ll be on in any future conflicts between police and civilians. And it won’t be ours.
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