Cedar Rapids civil rights attorney proposes changes to address police brutality. | Pixabay
Cedar Rapids civil rights attorney proposes changes to address police brutality. | Pixabay
A spate of police brutality prompted Cedar Rapids civil rights attorney Dave O’Brien to propose changes to properly address the matter.
O’Brien, who is representing the family of a 22-year-old white man who died in police custody last year in addition to handling a case of a southeast Iowa woman who was fatally shot by an officer responding to a domestic dispute, proposed independent police review boards that would investigate any claims of wrongdoing against a law enforcement official.
The attorney said if the board determines probable cause, the case will be referred to the special prosecutor.
“There’s just too much institutional bias for police officers and prosecutors who work with those police officers every day to investigate their own,” O’Brien told KTVO.
He also wants to eliminate qualified immunity, which deems officers not liable for their misconduct.
“Me doing this kind of work has caused me to have much greater respect for law enforcement officers because I have a good understanding of the difficult, and at times very dangerous job that they do,” O’Brien told KTVO.
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