AP/Hunter/Lang
04/06/21
The State of Iowa will pay $225,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a man who was injured when a state trooper knocked him over and put his knee on his neck during a 2017 traffic stop.
The payment to Bryce Yakish ends a lawsuit he filed against the state and former Iowa State Patrol trooper Robert Smith in 2019, after a sheriff released startling dash camera video of the arrest.
The lawsuit alleged that Smith assaulted and falsely arrested Yakish, then lied about what happened.
The case prompted scrutiny into other allegations of misconduct against Smith, who resigned in 2018. He then became a police officer for the city of Durant, where his wife Dawn had previously served as mayor and was then the chairwoman for the Cedar County Board of Supervisors. She remains a member of the Board.
KCJJ reported in 2019 that Cedar County Sheriff Warren Wethington had a long running feud with Ms. Smith, and declared in May of that year that that his jail would not book any suspects whom Durant officers arrest for the foreseeable future. He barred Durant officers from setting foot in the county law enforcement center and ordered his own deputies to not base any arrests on the observations of Durant officers.
At the time, Wethington said the main problem was that Robert Smith, one of the town’s three full-time officers, had a history of being untruthful, using questionable force and generating complaints about his harsh demeanor. And Durant’s police chief, he said, was aware of the problems but hired Smith anyway even though some of them have to be disclosed to criminal defendants.
When the video of Smith striking Yakish was released, Smith voluntarily resigned in July 2019.