CONTRIBUTED PHOTO — A sign referencing the body camera footage of a traffic stop involving former Toledo Police Sgt. Kyle Howe and 72-year-old Steve Horrigan was placed on the Tama County Courthouse lawn last week.

Most of Tama-Toledo first heard of ex-Toledo Police Sgt. Kyle Howe after the late March traffic stop of Shyla Wolf, but there are some who knew his name long before that. The 16 videos posted on the Tama Toledo News Chronicle Youtube page cover five incidents that show Mr. Howe’s handling of the situations, which have been widely condemned and criticized. However, it is known that these five incidents are just the tip of the iceberg.

One such run-in took place back on July 30, 2022. A pair of teenage boys were pulled over by Howe after they were seen in Toledo Heights Park after dark at 9:55 p.m. Toledo Heights Park closes at 10 p.m.

It is also stated by Mr. Howe that he knows that other people were currently in the park, but there was only one of him. Mr. Howe took the 16-year-old driver back to his police cruiser for an interrogation.

Howe’s body camera video shows him talking to the boy, asking if the two were intoxicated or smoking weed. Howe accuses the teenager of having enlarged pupils and tells him he may ask for a urine sample. After several minutes of talking to the driver, Mr. Howe then walks back to the boy’s car and talks to the 16-year-old passenger.

At one point, the teenage passenger asks to call his parents; Mr. Howe said no and to get out of the car. Howe opened the passenger’s side door. The teenager, still buckled in his seat says, “You can’t do this.”

Howe’s body camera then becomes obscured as he starts to pull and yank the boy out of the car. At one point, Howe’s body camera falls into the grass. Between Mr. Howe repeatedly shouting, “You’re done,” the boy pleads as he says “I can’t breathe, sir.”

Another run-in took place back in September of 2022. A group of teenagers in a car were pulled over due to an incident from earlier in the evening. Howe asks one teenage girl to get out of the car. As the 16-year-old gets out of the car, Howe starts to cuff her and shoves her into the side of the vehicle. Doing so he repeatedly says, “Stop resisting.”

One man says he was heading home last winter, just parked, and was heading to his apartment when Mr. Howe came in behind him, saying it was a traffic stop. According to this man, he didn’t believe it to be an actual traffic stop as he had already parked.

So he headed up to his apartment to put away the gaming system he had brought home. Not long after, Howe was banging on the door, yelling that the man was going to jail. The man says that when he opened the door and submitted to being arrested, Howe tackled him to the ground, knocking over a shelf of canned goods and breaking the man’s glasses in the process, all while saying, “Stop resisting.”

This man says that after he asked for a lawyer, Howe’s attitude changed. After the man refused a field sobriety test, Howe got a warrant for his urine and towed his truck. Several other incidents were told by this man that followed this initial run-in with Mr. Howe, where he felt intimidated and like Howe was watching him, trying to see if he would make a mistake.

A Tama woman has made similar statements. Her episode with Howe took place earlier this year. She had already been stopped by a Toledo police officer once that day, and she felt like she was being followed by a cop car.

She drove up to the Toledo ArrowHead Trailer Court Park, where she then parked and sat. A coworker came and picked her up, and the two started back toward Tama. This is when a Tama police officer pulled them over.

Howe showed up on the scene a few minutes later. He asked the woman to get out of the vehicle then accused her of smoking weed. He asked her why her coworker’s vehicle smelled of weed and when she had last had a urine test done.

The coworker was eventually let go, but the Tama woman was put in the back of Howe’s cop car. Transported from one town to the other, the Tama woman was taken back to her car in the Toledo ArrowHead Trailer Court Park. Officers proceeded to search her car as she sat in the back of Howe’s police cruiser.

After apparently finding nothing, the Tama woman was let go. She told officers how upsetting it all was, and one officer said, “Well, what do you expect with your background?” After the Tama woman shared this incident with the News-Chronicle, she said that Howe had tried his hardest to intimidate her.

Intimidated is also how a man from Chelsea felt around Mr. Howe during a traffic stop in June of 2022. The man blew a zero on the breathalyzer but failed the field sobriety tests, he says, due to his nystagmus caused by the condition vertigo. Finally agreeing to a urine test back at the police station, the man from Chelsea says he saw Howe use a “store kit” to test his urine because Howe said, “I am just curious,” before sending it off for the official test.

The Chelsea man says he was charged with an OWI three, but his lawyer had it reduced to an OWI one. He said he took the deal because it’s a small town and to avoid a felony.

“Looking back, I should have fought it,” he said.

A local Puerto Rican gentleman had a similar experience. One night as he was out to get a jug of milk, the gentleman said he was pulling out of the Kwik Star when he realized his lights weren’t on. After turning his lights on, he saw Howe in his cruiser, and he was subsequently pulled over.

Expecting to get in trouble for no insurance, the gentleman was taken off guard by Howe asking when he last smoked weed. Subjected to field sobriety testing, one part stood out above the rest, as Howe asked him to follow his finger, then made a figure eight.

Howe also asked why the gentleman’s eyes were bloodshot, and the gentleman said he responded by saying it was simply because he was tired.

“I could see he was getting irritated,” the gentleman said.

Charged with a litany of items, from failure to yield to failure to use headlamps, the gentleman said Howe, at one point in the paperwork, also referred to him as a woman.

One Toledo couple talked passionately about their run-ins with Howe. Several incidents were mentioned, but one in August of 2021 was the highlight.

The couple told how Howe, after suspecting a substance on the front porch was marijuana, proceeded to search their house without a warrant. The husband was charged with several felonies that night, including but not limited to a controlled substance violation and being a felon in possession of a gun.

Even though he was charged with four separate felonies that night, the husband was only sentenced to three years of supervised probation. The wife said that it was the most horrible night of her life, while the husband told how he thought Howe had it out for him.

A painted plywood sign was planted at the Tama County Courthouse last week saying, ‘Steve Horrigan assaulted, and it’s not okay.’ This is just one way that the community has reacted to the videos and stories revealing Howe’s conduct as a Toledo police officer. Another citizen has taken to making shirts which state ‘police the police #maketoledosafe.’

Toledo City Attorney Mike Marquess said that officials are working hard so that nothing like this ever happens again.

“The behavior shown in the videos is not appropriate and is not something in any way the city condones,” Marquess said.

Mr. Howe resigned from the Toledo police department Sunday, April 23. According to Mr. Marquess, the city has severed all ties with him, and Howe’s attorney currently has no comment on the subject.

It was reported at the April 24 Toledo City Council meeting that no complaints had been received through the city’s complaint process. Howe’s “misconduct” was brought to the attention of the City of Toledo after Toledo Police Chief Quigley received an email from KCRG informing him of the soon-to-be-aired story of Shyla Wolf’s excessive force allegations.

The Chief and the City Attorney encourage anyone who has a complaint against an officer to come and make an official complaint. No formal or informal inquiry can be conducted, according to the Iowa code, until a complaint has been notarized. Marquess has talked about looking for another location at which to file a complaint against a police officer other than the police station; two examples given were either his office or the office of the city clerk.

“I also think from what I’ve seen, there’s been a substantial breakdown in the criminal justice process,” Toledo City Attorney Mike Marquess said. “Where those who have been handling these cases in the courts, If they’ve been seeing problems, they’ve not been relaying that to the city.”

These stories strongly suggest that this was not a one, two or three time incident: locals that have had so called “run-ins” with Howe go back to at least 2021.

As stories of Howe’s behavior as an officer have become public, more citizens who have accused him of excessive force are looking to request body camera footage from their incidents.

“We take our obligation to the public very seriously, and our mission of our police department to protect and serve the public very seriously,” Marquess said at the council meeting on April 24.