TIPTON, Iowa (AP) - Sheriff’s deputies in an eastern Iowa county said they’ve filed a complaint with state’s attorney oversight office about the county’s top prosecutor. They said he’s too lenient on defendants and has made inappropriate comments to sex crime victims.
All 13 Cedar County deputies shared with the county board a Feb. 20 letter expressing no confidence in County Attorney Jeff Renander.
“This was not a sudden decision,” Chief Deputy Kevin Knoche told The Gazette. “We’ve had concerns for a while and it finally got to the point where we believed we had to do something.”
A woman who answered a phone Thursday in Renander’s Tipton office told The Associated Press that Renander wouldn’t comment on the allegations.
The deputies said in their letter that they were shocked “to hear of examples when Cedar County Attorney Renander has victim-shamed as well as minimized the traumatic experiences of multiple sexual abuse victims, to include child sexual abuse victims.”
The letter said cited comments heard by officers that Renander recently made to the victim in a sexual abuse case, essentially blaming the woman for the assault.
The names, contents and results of complaints are not made public by the oversight office unless a reprimand is recommended.
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