On a Friday night in July 2018, Des Moines police officers Ryan Steinkamp and Brian Minnehan saw Domeco Fugenschuh, a 22-year-old black man, driving west on Hickman Road. Steinkamp and Minnehan, both white, were assigned to a “special enforcement team” focused on illegal guns, drugs, and gang activity. They had no reason to believe Fugenschuh was involved with any of that, but they decided to follow him anyway because he “sat up slightly” and “turned his head to stare at the officers” as he passed them.
After the cops followed Fugenschuh for several blocks, he expressed his irritation at the unjustified attention by giving them the finger. Steinkamp and Minnehan did not like that, so they continued following Fugenschuh and pulled him over for an invented traffic violation. During the stop, the officers handcuffed Fugenschuh, roughed him up, searched his car, and arrested him for the alleged traffic infraction. They also charged him with marijuana possession after the car search turned up a bit of pot and a portable phone charger that they mistakenly thought was a digital scale.
When Fugenschuh sued Steinkamp and Minnehan for a litany of constitutional violations, they argued that they were shielded by qualified immunity, which bars federal civil rights claims against government officials unless their alleged misconduct violated “clearly established” law. Last Saturday, U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Helen C. Adams rejected that defense, ruling that a jury should hear Fugenschuh’s allegations because it might reasonably conclude that Steinkamp and Minnehan ignored constraints that should be familiar to every police officer in the country.
The decision was a small victory for civil liberties, and the abuses that Fugenschuh suffered pale beside the sort of outrageous police conduct that tends to attract national attention. But this run-of-the-mill case nicely illustrates the wide discretion that the Supreme Court has given police officers to harass motorists for no good reason—leeway that cops nevertheless manage to exceed on a regular basis.
The facts of the traffic stop are mostly undisputed, conceded by the officers and/or verified by dash and body camera footage. Steinkamp and Minnehan pulled Fugenschuh over after he stopped at a red light, signaled a right turn, and turned onto 30th Street. When Steinkamp approached Fugenschuh’s car, he initially refused to explain the justification for the stop. Instead he ordered Fugenschuh out of the car and handcuffed him.
After Fugenschuh “asked numerous times why he was stopped,” Steinkamp claimed Fugenschuh had “cut off” a car that was moving north on 30th Street, as evidenced by the fact that the driver had applied his brakes. Fugenschuh disputed that account, which apparently irked Steinkamp, who “proceeded to bend Fugenschuh over the hood of the patrol car,” “pull his handcuffed arms up above his body,” and push his face into the hood of the car.
While frisking Fugenschuh, Steinkamp asked if he had insurance, at which point Fugenschuh began cursing at the cops. “You’re going to jail now,” Steinkamp responded.
Hellbound and Down 