Iowa police shooting suspect waved Confederate flag

The suspect behind a double police shooting in the Des Moines area on Wednesday morning appears to have been escorted from a high school football game last month after he raised a Confederate flag in front of black audience members.

The Des Moines and Urbandale police departments identified a suspect in the two police shootings as Scott Michael Greene, 46, from Urbandale, a city just outside of Des Moines, Iowa and released a photograph.

In a recent YouTube video, a man who appears to be Greene is escorted by officers from a high school football game after he held up a Confederate flag while sitting near several black audience members.

An image taken from Scott Greene's YouTube channel shows Greene holding a Confederate and American flag in front of several black people.

YouTube

In the 11-minute YouTube video posted to a channel with Greene's name, the man can be heard arguing with Urbandale Police Department officers while standing on the grounds of Urbandale High School. The video was posted on October 16, but took place on October 14, according to the title, when a high school football game was taking place.

In the video, officers repeatedly ask the man to leave the grounds, but he refuses, and demands to know why he is being asked to leave. After he is escorted by an officer to a public sidewalk, another officer approaches him to ask him what happened in the stands. The man responds: "Someone behind me hit me. It was almost like a mugging, but I had my property. And I was holding it. And they stole it from me." When the officer asks which property he is referring to, he says: "The flag that this officer right here is holding."

The man in the video also clarifies that he held up the flag while the national anthem was playing. He demands police press charges against the person who assaulted him. When asked to describe the person who allegedly carried out the assault, he says: "They were African American people that were behind me."

Another officer explains that the flag "is in violation of school code." "I was peacefully protesting," the man responds, claiming "that is my constitutional right."

Greene's YouTube channel regularly posts videos, but they rarely show the man's face. Other videos show the man at a dog park and at cheerleading competitions. One of the channel's earliest videos, posted in 2014, features country music. Most of the videos were posted in recent weeks, and the latest video was posted on October 30.

Two officers, one from Des Moines Police Department, and a second from Urbandale, "were sitting in their car" when they were shot around 20 minutes apart in the early hours of Wednesday morning in Urbandale, Des Moines police Sgt. Paul Parizek said at a news conference.

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