Des Moines police officer testifies about fracturing man's ribs

Embattled police officer Cody Grimes defended the bone-breaking force he inflicted during a March incident, claiming it was necessary because he could not see the hands of a man he was arresting.

But Charles Edward Young testified on Monday that the Des Moines officer pinned him to the ground and ignored his cries that his hands were stuck underneath him by his waistline. Young, 61, heard the commands to put his hands behind his back and he was not resisting, he said.

"My reply was to him, 'Officer, I'm trying to give you my hands if you get up off me,'" he testified.

The arrest left Young with two fractures to his left rib cage and a charge of assault on a police officer for slamming a door that struck Grimes. But jurors are set to begin deliberating on Tuesday over whether Young, a food industry worker, intended to hurt the officer during the incident that unfolded around 2 a.m. March 20 inside his Grand Avenue apartment.

Jurors will have to rely largely on the conflicting accounts of Young, Grimes and Sean O'Neill, another Des Moines officer who responded after Young called police to have a homeless couple removed from his apartment. All three testified at a trial Monday and at times even both officers' testimony differed as to what happened in the third-floor apartment.

Neither officer was wearing a body camera at the time. A body microphone that O'Neill wore was too far from the recording system inside his patrol car to have a reliable audio recording of the incident, he said.

The incident has drawn close scrutiny due to Grimes' checkered past with the department, including a shooting involving a photojournalist, a past excessive force claim that led to a federal lawsuit and a $75,000 payout by the city and Grimes' own guilty plea to criminal mischief after a domestic dispute with a girlfriend.

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Grimes was fired by police officials in June 2014, but the city's civil service commission overturned the decision months later. However, jurors did not hear evidence of the past incidents after a defense attorney agreed not to bring them up at the trial.

Des Moines Police Chief Dana Wingert cleared Grimes of any wrongdoing in Young's arrest after an internal review that was finished in May. But defense attorney Darren Page made it clear Monday morning that he would portray Young as the actual the victim in the incident and the officer as "violent and aggressive." Young testified that he did not intend for the door to hit Grimes.

"Our theory of the defense is that Cody Grimes was the aggressor, my client was a victim," Page said during a pretrial hearing in front of District Court Judge Gregory Brandt. "That’s what we’re here for."

In the witness stand, Young told jurors that he called police in the early morning to help him kick out a homeless couple that he met through some friends and invited to stay with him. He wanted to remove them from his apartment after the "female started some drama."

Both officers testified that Young had bloodshot eyes and was slurring his speech and he admitted to jurors that he had been drinking. But Young, who said he served for three years in the U.S. Army, argued that he wasn't intoxicated.

"I was coherent enough to call the police and call for some assistance to get these guys out of the apartment," he said. "I don’t think I was that drunk.”

Grimes and O'Neill both testified that they interviewed all the people inside the apartment and concluded together that Young would have to go to civil court to legally evict the homeless couple. Grimes said the couple told them they had lived there for approximately three weeks and he ordered both Young and the pair to "leave each other alone for the night."

The outcome angered Young, who admitted that he told the officers to "get the (expletive) out of my apartment" and then slammed the door. Grimes was not completely out of the apartment when the door hit his legs and back hard enough to transfer paint from the door onto his pant leg and boot, he said.

Grimes turned around and decided to arrest Young, he said. The officer said Young was moving away from the door, and he grabbed him by his sweatshirt. The two ended up "face-to-face" and Grimes grabbed Young in a bear-hug position and took him to the ground.

Grimes said that he could not get Young's hands out from under his stomach and he ultimately struck him with his knees several times to force him to comply with orders. The officer said using pepper spray would have endangered the other people in the apartment and his Taser was not an option because he was essentially crouched over Young.

"At that point, I didn't know if he had a hold of something in his waistline, if he had a hold of his belt … what he was going for underneath there," Grimes said.

During questioning from the defense attorney, Grimes said that the force was in line with training that he received. Grimes admitted that he could have used the less forceful measures of finding Young's pressure points, but said he decided that technique would be ineffective for the situation.

"In my experience, pressure points don't work on everybody," Grimes said in his response. "Pressure points can be used within situations such as when people are protesting or something like that, we've got arms locked or things like that … If you've got somebody who's fighting or rolling around with you it's difficult to get to those points."

Grimes said the officers spent between 10 and 15 minutes in the apartment and never saw any evidence that Young had a weapon hidden within his clothing. The knee strikes and arrest happened in a short burst that lasted only 45 seconds to a minute, he said.

Despite Young's claims, Grimes also testified that he never heard him say that his hands were stuck. O'Neill, who was outside the door for the arrest, said there was "a lot of commotion" and he couldn't hear any exact words that were spoken.

The officers’ accounts of what happened in the apartment differed at times, though. O’Neil told jurors that it was Grimes who spoke with Young about the eviction process, and that he became angry. But Grimes told jurors he believed the other officer informed Young about how to evict the couple from his apartment.

Both Page and Assistant County Attorney Dominic Anania will give closing arguments on Tuesday before jurors begin their deliberations. The panel of 13 jurors includes one African-American member.

Young also faces a simple misdemeanor count of interference with official acts that will be decided by Brandt rather than the jury.