Des Moines Police Department conducting investigation into use of force during protests

Des Moines police are conducting a comprehensive investigation into the collective use of force throughout the protests following the death of George Floyd. This comes after Des Moines City Council member Josh Mandelbaum made the investigation public during a council meeting on June 22. “In the interest of transparency and accountability, I wanted to make sure the public knew this investigation was underway and that we do have a plan to share the results publicly,” Mandelbaum said. City Manager Scott Sanders said the investigation should be available by September. The Des Moines Police Department said Chief Dana Wingert was not available to discuss the investigation, but Sgt. Paul Parizek spoke with Local 5’s Eva Andersen about the investigation, and DMPD’s Use of Force Policy. “Every single use of force by our officers is investigated internally, and it’s been that way for as long as I can remember, decades,” Sgt. Parizek said. “The only thing that’s going to be different with this one, is in addition to those individual investigations, because there are so many agencies involved, we’re going to get together at some point and have a comprehensive review of everything we did collectively and maybe see if there’s some things we could do better or do differently should something like this happen again.” Download the We Are Iowa app: https://weareiowa.com/app Subscribe to Local 5's "5 Things to Know" newsletter: https://weareiowa.com/email 'Like' Local 5 on Facebook:   / weareiowa