Northern Utah residents pack town hall after arrest of 76-year-old by police chief

MANTUA, Utah (KSL.com) — A physical altercation between a 76-year-old Mantua resident and the town’s police chief, which neighbors say left the elderly man bloodied and concussed, may prove to be a breaking point for the small, struggling police department with a checkered history.

Thursday night, residents packed the chambers and foyer of the Mantua Town Hall, some calling for the termination of Chief Dakota Midkiff, who is currently on administrative leave pending review. The town attorney was called in to walk through segments of almost three hours of body camera footage not yet released to the public.

Cars lined the grass and pebble easements on both sides of the road leading up to the city building, which faces the Mantua Reservoir in Box Elder County. Neighbors shuffled in to find the wooden chairs in the cramped waiting area occupied, others standing along walls and in the doorway to the council chambers, in which every seat was taken. Some even sat on the ground in the singular aisle leading to the curved committee table.

Rick Schulze, 76, did not attend the council meeting.

“He’s still beat up,” said Tiffany Reimann, Schultz’s neighbor, to the crowded room. “He still doesn’t want people seeing what he looks like. He’s in a pretty dark spot right now because of what happened.”

On Oct. 5, Schulze had walked over to his daughter’s house, where Midkiff had responded to a domestic call. Schulze, who family says was an officer for the Division of Wildlife Resources for over 30 years, left the property as instructed by Midkiff but returned to the consternation of the chief, according to a police booking affidavit.

Schulze was standing in the driveway, became “argumentative” and was yelling, Midkiff wrote in the arrest report. “I approached him and instructed him to place his hands behind his back. He refused to comply with my instructions and resisted me trying to place his hands behind his back. I decentralized him, and he continued to resist.”

Town attorney Seth Tate told the audience at the meeting that the two men “struggle while standing up for a few seconds, the chief uses his right leg to, in essence, sweep the feet out and try to bring Mr. Schultz the ground.”

The body camera video, according to Tate, does not show when Schultz’s “head must have hit the concrete.”

Photos taken by family and neighbors appear to show Schulze’s head bloodied with wounds darkened into plum-colored bruising across his face. One of those photos was passed around during the meeting in a cellophane sleeve. One man told KSL.com he visited Schulze a day after that photo was taken and said his injuries looked even worse.

“I have definitely seen elderly people with much more benign looking injuries that have died as a result of those injuries,” said Joe Bach, a friend of Schulze, to the gathering.

Reimann’s version of events differed from the booking report, but she spoke from secondhand knowledge.

“Midkiff made a mountain out of a molehill,” she said. “Instead of keeping the peace in our town and keeping things safe, he made things completely out of control that day.”

Tate provided a legal analysis of the use of force, which was “frankly against my better judgement,” he said, given how recent the incident happened and how little time the town has had to investigate. He played a 3.5 minute clip of body camera footage and presented a preliminary finding.

The severity of the crime being investigated may not have warranted Midkiff’s use of force, Tate explained, but he said the perceived threat Schulze posed and his alleged resistance to arrest both lean in favor of Midkiff’s use of force being justified.

A petition started by Reimann has been passed around since that day, calling for the termination of Midkiff, which she estimates has 240 signatures so far. The town will be sending it to the Utah Peace Officer Standards and Training, which certifies Utah police officers and is conducting its own review, according to Tate.