Cops in Tiny Iowa Town Charged With Stalking Women and Tasering Party Guests

They’re accused of stalking and snooping, embezzling and evidence tampering, sextortion and falsifying documents, stealing from a fire department and repeatedly using a Taser on party guests. They’re accused of perjury, data breaches, and obstructing prosecution. They’re accused of illegal vacationing, misappropriating dental funds, and tax evasion.

They’re a gaggle of former officials from Armstrong, Iowa, where they’ve racked up more than 100 combined criminal charges.

Armstrong, located on the state’s northern border, has a population of approximately 875. But a clique of local officials—including the town’s former mayor, his son-in-law (the town’s former police chief), and a local ex-cop—are accused of single-handedly sending the tiny enclave’s crime rate sky-high. Together, they’ve been charged with more than 100 counts, ranging from assault to embezzlement. That’s not even counting another dozen charges facing an alleged accomplice cop in a nearby town.

Two city clerks have pleaded guilty in the case, with the remainder pleading not guilty.

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Most of the allegations are new this month, when former Armstrong police officer Benjamin Scheevel was hit with 84 charges. Those charges include multiple counts of perjury, obstructing an investigation, stalking (including stalking with a dangerous weapon), unauthorized access and dissemination of police data, assault with a dangerous weapon, tax evasion, and theft.

Those allegations span two police departments: Armstrong, where Scheevel was most recently employed, and the nearby town of Estherville, where Scheevel previously worked as a cop.

While working in Estherville in 2019, the new charges allege, Scheevel stalked a local woman and used his job to obtain personal information about her. Although the charging document is light on details, Scheevel’s alleged victim, Victoria Abrahamson, previously accused Scheevel of sexual extortion.

In a lawsuit filed last year, Abrahamson claims that Scheevel was working as an Estherville police officer and moonlighting as a repo man for a credit agency in 2019. That’s when, according to her lawsuit, Scheevel and a colleague repossessed her car. Abrahamson, a nursing student, couldn’t afford the $1,500 fee to reclaim her car—so Scheevel started soliciting sexual favors in exchange for the vehicle, she alleges.

Abrahamson says she refused the officer’s advances, but that Scheevel used his role as a police officer to threaten her and her family, implying that he could cause “trouble” for her if she didn’t comply with his demands for lewd photos. According to the lawsuit, which is ongoing, Scheevel suggested that he could cause legal trouble for the father of Abrahamson’s child who, by Scheevel’s own alleged admission, was not in trouble with the law.

Abrahamson’s lawyer declined to comment on Scheevel’s new charges, and Scheevel’s lawyer did not return a request for comment. The former cop has denied Abrahamson’s allegations in court, and has pleaded not guilty to the dozens of new criminal allegations. (Scheevel has previously been sued, unsuccessfully, after he and a colleague fatally shot a man with schizophrenia in 2014. Scheevel and his colleague were found to have acted in self-defense, and a judge dismissed the man’s mother’s lawsuit.)

But the lengthy new charging documents suggest that Abrahamson wasn’t Scheevel’s only target. He’s also accused of stalking another local woman and using his police powers to look up personal information about at least four of her family and friends.

In all, Scheevel is accused of using police databases to snoop on 25 people, many of them northern Iowa women. Earlier this month, he was served with court orders barring him from contacting four women, the Fairmont Sentinel reported.

But some of Scheevel’s alleged targets were fellow cops—including one who is also implicated in the sprawling local scandal. Scheevel is accused of illegally accessing information on Estherville Police officer Tyler Van Roekel. Elsewhere in the charging documents, Scheevel is also accused of obstructing a prosecution against Van Roekel who, in turn, was slapped with a dozen charges of his own this month.

Van Roekel has pleaded not guilty to the charges, all of which relate to his alleged improper access and dissemination of personal information. Some of those alleged breaches involve Abrahamson, whose personal information Van Roekel allegedly accessed and sent to Scheevel.

Not all of the duo’s alleged crimes involve data breaches. Scheevel is also accused of theft, perjury, and using his job as a repo man to avoid taxes. But his final two charges (assault with a dangerous weapon and non-felonious misconduct in office) connect him to a broader ring of alleged crime among Armstrong officials.

In April 2016, prosecutors allege, Scheevel let someone borrow his police-issued Taser at a party, where it was used to assault Tylor Evans, an Armstrong city employee. Prosecutors also claim partygoers refunded Scheevel for the Taser darts, and that Scheevel failed to report the cache of crowdfunded stun-gun money.

Scheevel does not appear to have fired the stun gun. Though he is not named in the charging documents, another former cop was previously arrested in the Taser incident. Craig Merrill, the chief of Armstrong’s police force at the time of the incident, is accused of bringing Scheevel’s Taser to multiple parties, where he shot guests for entertainment.

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“Defendant Merrill announced that he knew he was ‘not supposed to do this,’” prosecutors alleged after Merrill’s Feb. 2021 arrest, adding that he “attempted to prevent partygoers from documenting the crime, and told partygoers he would lie to the City Council about whether the Taser darts had been deployed.”

Prosecutors went on to accuse Merrill of unsuccessfully trying to wipe the stun gun’s memory after shooting party guests. He has pleaded not guilty, and unsuccessfully attempted to have the case dismissed last year, arguing that party guests had consented to being electrocuted.

A judge declined the motion, writing that “typical birthday party attendees do not expect the hired clown or magician to start electrocuting and incapacitating people.”

While shocking, the Taser allegations are not the most troubling charges facing Merrill, who stepped down as police chief after his arrest last year. The former chief is also charged with “ongoing criminal conduct” for illegal financial gain, theft of checks worth more than $10,000, and illegally accepting an all-expenses-paid vacation from his supporters.

Merrill was charged alongside three other Armstrong officials, including his father-in-law, the city’s then-mayor Gregory Buum. While serving as mayor, Buum and three city clerks allegedly ran a years-long corruption ring.

Buum and city clerks Connie Thackery and Tracie Lang are accused of stealing city money by writing illegal checks to insiders like Merrill, and falsifying records to cover their tracks. Some of those funds went to Evans, the alleged Taser victim and to Evans’ then-partner Mary Staton, who oversaw the city’s payroll checks. Evans is not charged with a crime, although a state auditor’s report in 2017 claimed he and Staton received unearned city payouts, including improper dental reimbursements.

Staton was charged in February with third-degree theft and tampering with records, both misdemeanors. She and Lang have pleaded guilty in the scheme.

The rest have left office but pleaded not guilty. Buum, the former mayor, is also facing an additional misdemeanor charge for allegedly using the Armstrong Fire Department’s power tools in his own carpentry business.