Polk County deputy investigated for offensive Facebook posts about Islam

Charly Haley | The Des Moines Register

Show Caption Hide Caption Dan Charleston controversies through the years Polk County Sheriff's Sgt. Dan Charleston has drawn attention over the years, most recently for posting offensive comments about Islam on Facebook. The sheriff's office is conducting an internal investigation into those June 2017 comments.

The Polk County Sheriff's Office is investigating one of its own sergeants following complaints that the sergeant posted offensive comments about Islam to Facebook, including one post that calls the religion an "evil ideology."

Polk County Sgt. Dan Charleston, who has unsuccessfully run for sheriff twice, had two public posts about Islam on his personal Facebook page this week.

One post showed a graphic that claimed to list "verses from the Quran that inspire terrorists." Charleston added his own comments to accompany the graphic, including: "No reasoning with this evil ideology," referring to Islam.

That post had been deleted as of Thursday morning, but another post on Charleston's Facebook was a quote claiming to warn about the "threat of Islam." The quote was attributed to Franklin Graham, a nationally known Christian evangelist.

The sheriff's office is conducting an internal investigation regarding these posts, which were brought to the office's attention by citizen complaints.

"The Polk County Sheriff’s Office is very concerned with the messages posted on social media and are conducting an internal investigation regarding the situation," Lt. Rich Blaylock, department spokesman, said in a statement.

"We, as a law enforcement agency proudly serving a community of all faiths and backgrounds, work hard to be seen as fair and impartial," Blaylock said.

One of the citizen complaints against Charleston was filed by Mitch Henry of the Asian and Latino Coalition in Des Moines.

"We should not have a public employee here in Polk County who holds such divisive views," Henry told The Des Moines Register.

Henry said he and others are concerned not only about the Facebook posts, but about how the words in those posts may be reflected in Charleston's work as a law enforcement officer. Henry said he suspects Charleston may treat people who are Muslim unfairly.

"Will he treat a Muslim the same as everyone else? My guess is that he will not," Henry said. "It's really concerning to us."

Henry said he trusts the Polk County Sheriff's Office as a whole, as he has personally worked with other members of department — but he said he hopes that Charleston is fired.

A sheriff's office spokesman declined to speculate about the potential outcome of the internal investigation surrounding Charleston's Facebook comments.

Charleston did not immediately return a call seeking comment for this story on Thursday.

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Charleston, who is assigned to the sheriff's office's communications division, has been a member of the Polk County Sheriff's Office for 19 years and a law enforcement officer since 1989. He's made headlines in recent years as he unsuccessfully ran for sheriff in 2012 and 2016 as a Republican challenger to current Polk County Sheriff Bill McCarthy, a Democrat.

In 2014, Charleston filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against McCarthy, a chief deputy at the sheriff's office and three members of the county's civil service commission. The lawsuit claimed Charleston has faced retaliation since the 2012 election.

In 2016, a Polk County human resources report provided to Register columnist Rekha Basu showed Charleston had faced numerous allegations of gender bias, micromanagement and favoritism toward employees who answered to him. That human services report concluded Charleston should not supervise employees due to those allegations.

Charleston grew up in Altoona and served four years in the U.S. Army. He began his law enforcement career with Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and Pomona (Calif.) Police Department in 1989. He was ousted from the Pomona job after superiors determined that he had lied about the identification of a carjacker.

Charleston served two years as a reserve Altoona police officer before joining the Polk County Sheriff's Department in 1997. In 2003, then-Sheriff Dennis Anderson ordered Charleston to be fired after a conflict with another sergeant led to accusations that Charleston had a problem with women. But Polk County's Civil Service Commission, voicing skepticism about the origin of statements attributed to Charleston, eventually voted 2-1 to keep him on the job.

In 2012, Charleston received a two-day suspension for an incident in which a man died on a roadside in Altoona after heart failure. Charleston was the second of two deputies to arrive at the scene; neither deputy performed CPR during the roughly 12 minutes it took for paramedics to arrive. Charleston had arrived near the end of that 12-minute period.