jon@dmcityview.com

You either love Dave Murillo or you hate him. A contributing columnist for some time to this publication, no one brings in the hate mail like Dave. However, it wasn't the trashing of some public official or some right-wing rant that quite possibly did Dave in as a bi-weekly writer for Cityview, but rather a tagline that we placed at the bottom of his column indicating that he is a Des Moines Police Officer. When his superiors (and, according to Dave, his superiors' superiors) read that tagline, they figured they finally had him.

Dave has many enemies within the power structure of Des Moines. He points them out frequently with a purple dialect more suited for the YMCA locker room than even something as pointblank as this publication. And it drives them mad. With more than 100,000 people reading this paper every week, being called a "pussy" in Dave's column can leave a serious welt. And he thrives on it.

But that all changed when we decided to point out that Dave is a member of the DMPD - something he has pointed out himself numerous times in his column. It was too official, Dave said. It made it look as if he were speaking for the entire DMPD, he was told - though it's abundantly clear that the views he expresses are his own. And the hammer dropped. Dave's boss, Chief Bill McCarthy, when I spoke to him, asked us to remove the tagline. I told him I would not - that if a freelance writer is expressing strong opinions, the readers should know where that writer is coming from. Dave asked me to drop the identifying line, too, and I told him the chief of police does not set editorial standards for this publication. Dave told me it was not McCarthy's call, but rather a call to McCarthy from a Des Moines city official who started this unfortunate chain of events. Dave says top cop brass told him this and that they also told him the initial complaint came from The Des Moines Register, the entity Dave had criticized in the column when we first began using the tagline.

Of course, no one will go on the record to Dave or me about these allegations, which leaves us stuck between a rock and a hard place. Dave thinks any number of people are out to get him and we couldn't agree more. But is Dave's column worth enough to Cityview to let McCarthy and whoever might be pulling his strings hold sway over how we disseminate it? Not anymore than it is for Dave (as you'll read in the letter below that was given to us by a city leader who disagrees with how the situation was handled) to lose his job over.

Simply put, there is no such thing as too much information. And it's disappointing and, as Dave might say, "downright un-American," when a voice gets stifled because it is unpopular with individuals who have had their cages rattled by it. Dave is a top-notch cop and we're not closing the door on his return. But McCarthyism (both the Bill and Joe varieties) has no place inside the pages of newspapers. And until those who are trying to silence Dave realize that, our hands are tied. CV

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