Officials: Iowa police shooter waved Confederate flag at football game
URBANDALE, Iowa — Weeks before a man was apprehended as a suspect in the killings of two Iowa police officers, he was removed from a high school football game because he displayed a Confederate flag during the national anthem, police confirmed Wednesday.
Urbandale Police Chief Ross McCarty told reporters that Urbandale officers removed Scott Michael Greene from the football game. Police now say Greene shot and killed two police officers, Urbandale officer Justin Martin and Des Moines Sgt. Anthony “Tony” Beminioas, as they sat in their patrol cars early Wednesday morning, in ambush-style attacks.
He was apprehended later Wednesday after an hours-long manhunt.
Greene, 46, was removed from the football game after spectators complained that Greene waved the flag in front of minorities.
Greene shot a video of the Oct. 14 incident and posted it online, along with a photo that appears to show him holding the flag. He complained to officers that his constitutional rights were being violated because they were throwing him out, but police told him he was on private property and needed to leave.
Court records show Greene has had multiple run-ins with the law.
Three days after the incident at the football game, Greene was arrested in a domestic violence case. He was charged with elder abuse for an alleged attack on his mother. He was released from jail on bond and the case remains open.
On April 12, 2014, Urbandale police were called to answer a complaint of harassment at the apartment complex where Greene lived. The complaint said he threatened to kill another man, who he referred to using a racial epithet, during a confrontation in the parking lot.
“I will kill you n-----. F---ing kill you,” Greene said to the victim, according to the complaint.
Greene was charged with harassment. He pleaded guilty and received a suspended jail sentence and a year of probation. Court records show he completed a substance abuse and psychological evaluation.
Just two days before that incident, he was jailed and charged with interference with official acts after resisting Urbandale police officers trying to pat him for a weapon. An Urbandale officer described him as hostile and combative. He entered a guilty plea and was fined.
In 2001, Green was charged with causing bodily injury and criminal mischief in the fourth degree. It is not clear who he was accused of assaulting, but those charges were dismissed.
Greene remains in police custody at a Des Moines hospital. He has not yet been charged.