Here’s who will be reviewing police actions on the city’s new advisory board

Wichita’s city manager and police chief said they welcome transparency as they announced the members of a new Citizen’s Review Board, even as the board will have limits on its investigative and review powers.

“My philosophy is that we police with the consent of the people, so I welcome the oversight, citizen involvement in what we’re doing, looking at our policies and our practices and asking those tough questions,” police Chief Gordon Ramsay said.

City Manager Robert Layton said all of the board’s meetings will be open to the public, as will any recommendations. However, the board may speak behind closed doors about information that police want to keep confidential.

“We’ll try to keep that to a minimum, but again we have to protect the rights of the individuals that are involved in an incident as well, and that can be both on the victim’s side as well as an officer’s side,” Layton said.

Seven members and six alternates on the board — all of whom were selected by Layton — include several business executives and non-profit workers, three teachers, a pair of pastors and a former city council member.

Layton said the board may review investigative reports on recent incidents, including the fatal police shooting last month of an unarmed man on his porch after a fake “swatting” call was made to 911.

“This doesn’t work if we’re not as transparent as possible,” Layton said.

Civil rights attorney James Thompson, who has sued the city in several police shootings, told City Council members on Tuesday that Wichita city government has blood on its hands from the December “swatting” shooting.

Recent incidents make the announcement timely, Layton said.

“I want to assure the public that we’ve heard you and your concerns, we continue to hear you and we’re committed to taking appropriate steps and actions to improve the policies, procedures, training and tactics of our police department,” he said.

The city released 8 seconds of video from one body camera during the swatting call, but has declined to release footage from before and after the shooting and from additional cameras.

The city also denied The Eagle’s requests for police body-camera footage in two cases last year. The first dealt with an alleged police cover-up and FBI investigation of an off-duty officer who was accused of being involved in a hit-and-run accident after she had allegedly been drinking. The second involves an Iraqi man, his wife and their teenage daughter who were detained and questioned by officers after the man tried to deposit a check at a bank.

The board will be able to ask to review specific cases, Layton said, and the police chief also can request that they take a look at an issue.

“It is about transparency and accountability and making a process better that causes our citizens to feel comfortable with the police department, knowing that it’s their police department,” said board member Jay Fowler, a trial lawyer and partner with Foulston Siefkin and former president of the Wichita Bar Association. “So that mean addressing issues of public concern and figuring out how to do things better.”

The board can make recommendations that the department may or may not adopt, help with community outreach and education, look at racial- and biased-based policing issues, review officer misconduct cases upon request and suggest policy changes and look over internal investigation files, but with names of disciplined officers redacted.

However, the board won’t be able to conduct its own investigations, subpoena information or compel officers to testify, recommend discipline for specific officers, review active internal investigations or discuss its reviews of officer discipline cases and internal investigations publicly.

“We’re going to be an advisory board, we’re not going to be making decisions in terms of what to do in a particular incident,” Fowler said. “We’re going to talk about things that happened and ask the question of, ‘OK, what can we do to make it better?’”

This Citizen’s Review Board replaces a similar advisory board for the city manager. Layton said the new board will be more proactive.

“In the past, they responded to complaints that were brought forward, but they were not actively involved in incident review ... and they did not drill down very deeply in policies and procedures,” Layton said. “This group will be empowered to do a lot more in terms of bringing guidance to the department as they establish policies.”

The board members and alternates will go through 12 to 16 hours of training with continuous training as issues arise, Ramsay said. Their tenures will be staggered.

“(Alternates) will have the option to attend meetings, but they will not be able to participate in the discussion because they will not be members,” Layton said.

One alternate, Odell Harris Jr., a behavior specialist at Brooks Middle School and pastor at St. James AME Church in Wellington and Arkansas City, promised to attend every meeting.

“My vote may not necessarily matter, but my voice does,” Harris said. “For me to be able to bring the issue of my community to the forefront, to the very open public, that’s something that I strongly want to be able to do. For me, it’s not about the title of being on the board. For me, it’s about the task of bringing those issues that we face in the community to the public eye.”

Harris, a native northeast Wichitan, said he sees the issues daily with his students and people at church.

“I deal with the people who are hurting every day,” Harris said. “I deal with the students, I deal with the children who are going home to powerless homes. I deal with the students who are going home to parents who have maybe those negative backgrounds. I hear the cry every day and every day when I wake up and my feet hit the ground, I feel the call to go and make it better.”

He said many of his students whose parents have been in trouble with the police or who have been affected by homicides struggle with attendance and attention, act out and receive poor grades.

“I would like to see the young African American community have a better relationship with the law enforcement, I really would,” Harris said. “... I believe if you do what you’re supposed to be doing, everything will be OK. We need to start having those courageous conversations and bridge that gap.”

More than 100 people applied to be on the board.

Barry Grissom, a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Kansas, will serve as an adviser to the board.

Ramsay has said Wichita’s board will cost about $20,000 a year to operate. A board with investigative and subpoena powers would take “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said.

Contributing: Amy Leiker of The Eagle

This story was originally published January 18, 2018 at 10:47 AM with the headline "Here’s who will be reviewing police actions on the city’s new advisory board."