City attorney: Wichita police didn’t violate law with file of sensitive cases

The Wichita Police Department did not violate any laws by keeping years’ worth of sensitive cases – including those dealing with police officers and city employees – in a limited-access file separate from other investigations, according to an internal review by City Attorney Jennifer Magana.

Magana conducted a three-month review after City Manager Bob Layton said he became aware of the commonly called “confidential” files, which date to the 1980s.

Most police records are accessible by more than 800 Wichita Police Department employees. The limited-access files are available to 92 people across five agencies or departments.

There are 486 “confidential” files in the limited-access file database, along with 662 vehicular fatalities and 750 homicides.

Between one-fourth and one-third of the files contain a variety of “sensitive” cases involving Wichita police and city employees, Magana said. Others involve “high-profile” individuals, according to the review.

“Some cases are WPD officers being suspects or victims in their official capacities. There are suicides, rapes, aggravated indecent liberties, or unusual crime investigations in each year. However, from the limited number of cases per year, this would appear to include only a small percentage of those kinds of cases,” according to the review.

“The biggest category of offenses is that of WPD officers involved in (domestic violence) cases, either as a suspect (the majority are this) or as a victim.”

Findings, recommendations

The review found no systematic approach to designating files as limited access. Magana recommended that the Police Department – and the new chief, who is expected to begin work in late January – develop policies about what files go in the limited-access database.

The review also found that in some case reports involving a police officer as the suspect, the name was not included in the suspect field, which is not accepted police protocol. Instead, it was listed as “Known Suspect” or “Known Officer.” The review said that the police department has “developed a plan to address this issue” but provided no specifics.

Certain supervisors decide which cases go into the file. Magana said she did not know whether people who were part of the case files themselves could designate those files as “confidential.”

Magana said she’s not aware of whether other law enforcement agencies in Kansas have similar limited-access databases. She recommended regular audits of the file.

“The important takeaways for me are that we are going to develop a policy to make it clear on what records can be put into the limited-access file and what can’t,” Layton said.

“More importantly, make it clear who is responsible for that designation and that we don’t use the internal limited-access file as a mechanism to not share information with the public or with the media.”

The review says that the cases in the limited-access files were handled like other cases.

“There was a full investigation of every case,” Layton said.

Magana said the city will look at whether to retroactively release some of the records from the database.

Disclosure

Staff members commonly refer to the files as “confidential,” but Magana says that’s a misnomer and “invites a misconception that these files are ‘secretive.’ ”

She recommended the police department continue to have the database for those in the department on a need-to-know basis.

“The system appropriately exists to prevent ‘snooping’ by curious employees who have no business need to access these files and to protect the integrity of certain investigations,” according to the review.

The files are subject to the Kansas Open Records Act, Magana said.

The case information in the file includes investigative notes, narratives and photographs. A limited portion of the file – the front page of what is known as the incident report on each case – is automatically open to disclosure under Kansas open-records laws. Although the entire case can be requested, some of it might not be open under the law.

And with changes to the database entry system by the city, all cases should now appear in daily media briefings, even the ones in the limited-access database.

Previously, a coding problem in the system didn’t pull all of the cases, which, according to the review, didn’t have to do with the file’s “confidential” status.

This story was originally published December 28, 2015 at 1:09 PM with the headline "City attorney: Wichita police didn’t violate law with file of sensitive cases."