KUNA, Idaho — Mike Heikkola has called Kuna home for the past 35 years. He is close to his kids and grandkids, who live minutes away, and has always considered himself a law-abiding citizen. However, on an afternoon in January of 2023, he said that all changed.
He took outdated prescriptions to his local police department, to dispose of it properly. Before going into the station, he stops and looks at police cars parked next to him. Claiming they caught his eye, and he was curious.
"I noticed the second one was running the SUV next to him was running the police car. So I walked up to the window thinking maybe I can have a conversation with with a cop and see what all these electronics because they've got to stack electronics on their dash," he said.
It had been years since he'd seen a cop car up close, he said he used to love seeing them at the fair. Footage shows him looking into the police cars, almost like a kid, still clutching his paper bag of prescriptions.
Moments later, an unmarked white car barrels into the parking lot and a man gets out of the car and starts yelling at him. He said it scared him and he was totally unaware the man was an officer, he wasn't wearing a uniform. Heikkola said the man started yelling at him.
"II gave him an F-U and turned around, walked off because I had no idea who he was," he said. "He didn't identify himself as a policeman or anything, I thought he was just a psycho citizen or something, just out of control."
He goes into the station. Footage shows that shortly after a group of officers go outside and start examining the police cars. Inside, Heikkola turned in his medications and leaves the building. He learned that the man who yelled at him was a plain-clothed deputy. He said there were police on the porch and he was walking past them with his hands in his pockets.
"One of them yelled out, 'get your hands out of your pocket, get your hands out of your pocket,'" he said. "I pulled my hands out momentarily ... but then I said no. Because I knew they didn't have any authority over me I hadn't done anything wrong. They immediately grabbed me, pinned my arms behind my back and threw me into a rail that's on the outside of the police station."
He was not read his Miranda Rights and he said officers were not answering any of his questions. Heikkola said the police chief even came out of his office, but did not answer his questions. Additionally, he'd had back surgery a few months prior and the force the six deputies used when they threw him against the railing during his arrest caused him to soil himself.
Eventually officers told Heikkola he was under arrest for obstruction. They transported him to Ada County Jail, where he said things got even worse. He said he wasn't allowed a phone call for close to four-and-a-half hours and was never given a chance to clean up. He was unable to change clothes until his wife came to the jail.
"I decided that I'd been arrested wrong,' Heikkola said. "It was all wrong. I I felt like there was a gang mentality after they arrested me they were all surrounding me and kind of yelling in my ears and stuff."
He told KTVB that he lost trust in the police and that it has taken a toll on him and his family.
"It was the depression," he said. "The embarrassment, humiliation, the people that called me and asked me about it, my friends that were seeing it. And that was the worst part. The worst part of it."
The charges were dropped a few months later and Heikkola sued, and Ada County settled the suit. Heikkola was awarded $250,000 in damages. Additionally, Ada County Deputies must now take extra training classes in constitutional law, specifically concerning what happened with Heikkola.
KTVB reached out to Ada County about the incident. In a statement, Sheriff Matt Clifford said, "it wasn't their best day."
"For anyone to claim we are trampling on someone’s constitutional rights simply isn't true," Clifford said.
Something Heikkola does not agree with.
"My rights had been violated, there's nothing more important as citizens than to have the civil rights that we have," he said, "that's what makes our country the greatest on Earth, our civil rights."
In his statement, Clifford also acknowledged the new training.
"Part of the settlement was to include additional constitutional policing training; fortunately, we had already implemented this training prior to the settlement. We will now also include a scenario similar to Mr. Heikkola's in our scenario-based training. We are one of few law enforcement agencies across the country with routine built-in training time. Every patrol deputy receives 9.5 training hours per month. These blocks of training include topics such as firearms training, scenario-based training, legal updates, EVOC, de-escalation techniques, arrest and control techniques, CPR and first aid, and more," Clifford said.
Heikkola had also wanted an apology from the deputies, but he said they refused to entertain an apology as part of the deal.
"I asked them for a letter of apology. I was willing to knock off tens of thousands of dollars off my lawsuit if they would write a letter of apology, each one of them," he said. "It was like no, you made a mistake. You need to be held accountable. And to show transparency, to show it to the public. You made a mistake. We all make mistakes, we go to jail or we get fined ... Usually, there's nothing, as far as I can tell, that holds them accountable when they make mistakes."
Heikkola said that, at first, the settlement offered contained a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and he didn't want that. He wanted to be able to tell his story. Especially because, he said, so many people take the NDA and then you can't see how many times something like this happened.
Ada County will implement training and, as part of the settlement, they also have to send regular reports showing those training sessions happened to Heikkola.
"We need to stand up for our rights there. I feel like they're getting slowly eroded... And I'm hoping this opens their eyes," Heikkola said. "It should have never happened in the first place."
Right after the arrest, Heikkola said he wife wanted to move, and he felt uncomfortable whenever he saw the police. They decided to stay in their home, and he said the paranoia he had has slowly gone away.
He said this experience changed him.
"My mind is telling me that I need to be an activist, I need to get a body cam, I need to get a camera, and I need to watch the police a lot more closely and see that they don't violate other people's rights. The only way to do that is I think to record them, because recordings don't lie. And they might be seeing a lot more of me," Heikkola said
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