Des Moines needs a new police chief. Who in their right mind would want the job?

Outgoing Dana Wingert served the city honorably through a trubulent nine years

Aug 04, 2024

Des Moines Police Chief Dana Wingert, Photo courtesy City of Des Moines.

Cords for the TV and radio crews ran up the concrete stairs into the small conference room on the first floor of the Des Moines police station shortly after 5:30 a.m., Nov. 2, 2016.

Regional and national correspondents crowded into the room.

Shortly after 1 a.m. that day, a racist lowlife fired 15 to 30 rounds into the patrol car of Urbandale Police Officer Justin Martin, killing him.

About 20 minutes later, the killer massacred Des Moines Police Officer Tony Beminio.

I stood in the main hallway at headquarters. I still worked as a columnist for the local newspaper at the time. It hadn’t been that long since I worked the night police beat.

I spotted Des Moines Police Chief Dana Wingert walking toward his office. I called out his name. He turned and walked up to me.

I had my notebook in hand but I shoved it in my pocket.

Maybe I could have gotten some exclusive piece of news.

But in that moment, I was just a citizen and Wingert was a man I’d known for years. The shock and grief were obvious on his face.

I shook his hand. Then I hugged him. I told him I was sorry.

I had worked around cops a lot as a paragraph stacker, including a stint as the night police reporter for the local newspaper. I learned police procedures, training, habits, sense of humor, and mindsets.

Journalists and police often find themselves at odds, but I felt I understood where cops were coming from most of the time.

But it was not until that horrible November 2016 day that I understood the burden of command.

Beminio’s murder was the third line-of-duty death Wingert had faced that year.

In March 2016, Officers Susan Farrell and Carlos Puente-Morales died when a drunk driver traveling the wrong way on Interstate 80 collided head-on with the Des Moines police SUV they were riding in.

The two officers, the drunk driver, and the person the officers were transporting all died in a fiery crash.

That November, a man murdered Beminio and he would have to prepare his third eulogy of the year.

“This has to get easier,” Wingert said the day Beminio died.

I don’t know that it ever did.

In 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, Des Moines police dealt with riots from people protesting the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and police brutality, especially against people of color.

Protesters smashed windows at Merle Hay Mall stores and destroyed a police vehicle downtown. Police in riot gear pepper-sprayed protestors and made nightly arrests.

The clashes looked ugly. It felt as if society was coming apart.

Wingert attended City Council meetings. An activist took time at the beginning of every council meeting to call Wingert a white supremacist and demand he be fired.

Wingert kept a poker face.

At one point, someone made threats against Wingert and his family. Police instituted extra security measures, including hidden cameras.

How would it feel to be charged with keeping the peace and protecting the public yet know full well that swaths of the public actively hate you and some would see you dead?

The burden seems too heavy for anyone to carry.

Wingert announced his retirement in May but hasn’t specified his departure date.

It’s unfashionable in some circles to admit to liking police officers, but I do. I especially like Dana Wingert and am proud to call him my friend.

When he became chief, he made it a policy that any time officers were exposed to something troubling on duty — from the death or injury of a child to a grizzly homicide — they had to visit the department psychologist.

The move took the burden off the officers to ask for help. They had to go. It was an order.

Wingert spent innumerable hours working with community groups, even those who called him names, trying to ease tension between police and people unfairly treated by law enforcement.

But Wingert served as chief in a time of intense social unrest.

Some see police as the armed enforcers of a racist society.

They want police defunded and the money spent on social programs to prevent poverty.

Earlier this month, a Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy shot and killed Sonya Massey, an unarmed Black woman, in her home near Springfield, Illinois. She called for help. She ended up dead. Prosecutors charged the deputy with murder.

This happened in Illinois, not in Des Moines.

But regardless of where cops abuse their badges, it tarnishes them all.

America has a racism problem, especially between whites and Blacks; the conflict is at its most volatile and lethal when law enforcement is involved.

Last year, the Washington Post reported that Blacks are nearly three times as likely to be killed by police than whites.

Overwrought rhetoric in partisan media across the political spectrum intensifies conflict that has lasted since Europeans arrived on this continent.

I wish Wingert the best in his retirement.

I’m sure there will be many applicants for the job.

I am not sure why.

I wouldn’t wish that job on someone I loved.

Daniel P. Finney is a member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please visit their page to view a full roster of writers and consider subscribing to their columns. Writing is hard work; people ought to get paid for it. If you enjoy it, throw them a couple of bucks. They earned it.