500+ signatures, "BearCat work session" report, and a new MRAP deployment
Hello friends,
If you ever organized locally, you likely know that it’s hard to predict beforehand what will be the outcome of any particular event or action you are planning. You can throw something together at the last moment, and it can turn out to be a smashing success, or you can work on something for months, and it’ll end up being a dud.
Thanks to your voices, the budget work session this past Monday where Sheriff Kunkel presented the supervisors with his proposed “BearCat budget”, was the opposite of a dud. The Press-Citizen, The Daily Iowan and The Gazette all covered the meeting, but their coverage doesn’t quite give justice to the actual atmosphere of that morning (although The Gazette did a better job than the rest).
We were there, and I think the only fair characterization of what happened is that the Sheriff and the BoS took a beating from the public over this issue.
The public comment section of the work session lasted almost an hour, with 18 (!) members of the public voicing, in no uncertain terms, their opposition to the BearCat acquisition, and urging the county to get rid of the MRAP. Not a single member of the public spoke in support of either of the vehicles.
We also delivered hard copies of our petition — 50 pages of signatures — to each of the Supervisors and the Sheriff.
The rhetoric of public comments ranged from calm and composed to passionate to furious. The air was filled with conviction and solidarity. No angle of the issue was left untouched. If you have 55 minutes to spare, I highly recommend watching the whole thing. It was beautiful. A heartfelt “thank you” goes out to everyone who showed up, and everyone who spoke.
Now, whether this inspiring moment of our community coming together to say “no” to further police militarization is actually going to translate into the BoS taking a stand and rejecting the Sheriff’s budget remains to be seen.
While this meeting was a crucial juncture in the budget hearings, the actual vote on this likely won't happen until Jan. 12 at the earliest. This is good news, as it gives us time to put pressure on the supervisors to do the right thing.
Right now, two out of five of the supervisors, Jon Green and Lisa Green-Douglass are firmly on our side. Pat Heiden, as far as we can tell, is a lost cause (but if you have reasons to believe we’re wrong, please let us know!). That leaves us with Rod Sullivan and Royceann Porter.
Rod publicly and privately states that he is undecided, so it could appear that he should be the primary target of a grassroots persuasion campaign — except for the fact that he is not exactly known for taking hard principled stances on issues, especially when it involves going against the Sheriff’s office. Sometimes he talks a good game, but when it comes to the actual vote, time and time again he falters.
Royceann has stated that she much prefers a BearCat to an MRAP, and that she generally considers getting rid of an MRAP in favor of a smaller military vehicle to be a “win”. That said, her thinking seems to be influenced by a conviction that purchasing a BearCat is our only card in negotiation of the MRAP’s disposal, and she doesn’t seem to be considering the broader and, frankly speaking, scarier, implications of giving the Sheriff a more palatable, more deployable, more versatile military machine.
How do we find out whether either of them can be moved from their current positions? By taking action, calling, writing letters, and seeing how they vote on Jan. 12.
Their respective emails and phone numbers are rsullivan@johnsoncountyiowa.gov / 319-354-7199 and rporter@johnsoncountyiowa.gov / 319-321-2779. If you call/email either of them about this issue, please also drop us a line at friends@scrapthemrap.org, so we can have a better idea of the level of pressure they are getting.
Another MRAP deployment
On Wednesday, December 8, a day after the “BearCat budget” work session, the Johnson County MRAP was deployed to a farmhouse property about a mile west of West Branch to serve an arrest warrant because the suspect was — wait for it — "known to go armed" (!), and also “known to be in a vehicle on the property”:
Needless to say, "known to go armed" is a ridiculous criterion. Anyone who obtained a gun permit from the Sheriff’s office could be characterized as "known to go armed". If the Sheriff is trying to show that he "needs" an MRAP, he is failing at it.
500+ signatures and counting
We officially made it over the hump! As of this evening, our petition has 528 signatures — a milestone that seemed very remote just a couple of months ago. Needless to say, we wouldn’t be here without your voices and your support — so please take a moment to sit back, relax, and enjoy this slightly dramatic video we made to commemorate the occasion:
We’re hoping to double this number before the Board of Supervisors holds their budget vote. That translates to about 17 new signatures a day. Can we do it? If you open your contacts right now and start a couple of conversations with people you know about this issue, we just might!