Community leaders want diverse viewpoints in seeking new Wichita police chief

Leaders of minority communities are calling for a diversity of voices to be heard in selecting Wichita’s next police chief.

“That effort can’t be marginalized to one community,” said Junius Dotson, a black pastor at St. Mark United Methodist Church. “We have to move beyond simply saying it has to be from the African-American community.

“The police chief affects the whole community. We want all our citizens to be treated with respect and dignity.”

They’ll get no arguments from City Manager Robert Layton.

“I want it to be an inclusive effort,” he said. “I want the usual voices and the unusual voices as part of this.”

Last month, Norman Williams announced he was retiring as police chief, effective this Friday, after more than 14 years in the position.

The confluence of his retirement, the Aug. 9 police shooting death of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., and ongoing criticism of officer-involved shootings in Wichita has created a local outcry for community discussion.

The first public display of that dialogue came last week when a racially diverse audience packed East High School’s 600-seat auditorium to voice their concerns to Layton, Mayor Carl Brewer and interim Police Chief Nelson Mosley.

“It was a proactive move,” said Carlos Contreras, a Hispanic community leader who was on last week’s panel. “What’s happened for years in Ferguson is happening here now.

“We know there is racial profiling, we know people are getting taunted by police so they can arrest them,” he said. “No one has the right to take someone’s life just because they don’t speak the same language, act the same way or look the same.”

Community leaders want to keep the discussion going, particularly as it involves selecting a new police chief.

“The process needs to be open to the public,” said Brandon Johnson, executive director of Community Operations Recovery Empowerment (CORE), a local group focused on addressing root causes of such challenges as violence, poverty, gangs and substance abuse.

He said candidates for chief need to be invited to district advisory board meetings or a special forum so the public can ask questions.

“What are their views on what happened at Ferguson? We need to know,” Johnson said. “Do they believe in community policing? Do they believe in officers helping out citizens?

“They need to hear from us as we say, ‘This is what we want from you as you are serving us.’ ”

Layton has indicated that a new chief won’t be hired for eight months or so. The next four months will be spent doing an internal review of the department before recruitment of a new chief even starts, he said.

“It’s a good time to step back and look at what we’re doing,” Layton said. “It’s a good time to look at ... what our strengths are, what our weaknesses are.”

He said he’s aware of the department’s critics, so he wants the review to take a look at how some of those criticisms are handled.

“Let’s be honest about racial profiling, about our use of force, about our service levels in the community,” Layton said.

Johnson said, “I hope they are honest in their reviews.”

He said the city should say, “Hey, this is what we’ve been doing wrong. We need to fix this or tighten this up. And with our new chief, this is the direction we’d really like to take.”

Everett Dixson, 81, would like to see the new chief have officers do more to control gang activity.

“They know who are in the gangs,” Dixson said last week as he took a break from putting together a jigsaw puzzle at the Northeast Senior Center. “They have their lists.”

But he also added that it can’t all be left to the police.

“To control gangs,” he said, “there has to be community involvement.”

Police demographics

In the aftermath of unrest in Ferguson, much attention has been focused on the demographics of its police force.

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, 67.4 percent of Ferguson’s 21,000 residents are black. But its police force has 50 white officers and only three or four who are black – there’s been a debate on the number.

As of 2012, the U.S. Census Bureau shows nearly 11 percent of Wichita’s population of more than 380,000 is black. Nearly 15 percent of Wichita’s residents identify themselves as Hispanic.

Wichita’s police force of 630 has 47 black officers (7.5 percent) and 50 Hispanic officers (7.9 percent) as of Aug. 1, according to department figures.

“I would love to see those numbers increase for both African-Americans and Latinos,” Dotson said. “But it’s certainly not the discrepancy you see in Ferguson.

“It’s good to see we’re somewhere in the ballpark.”

Layton said, “We’re always working hard to recruit from local schools to get folks in the community interested” in becoming an officer “so we can have a workforce that’s reflective of the community.”

He said the goal isn’t necessarily to get the force’s numbers to match exactly with the demographics.

“But we need to be as aggressive as possible to get closer,” Layton said.

Williams is black, as are two of Wichita’s three deputy chiefs, including Mosley.

The next chief’s race isn’t a key factor for Johnson.

“We had an African-American chief,” he said, “and we were still being killed and profiled.

“I’d just like to see someone – it doesn’t matter what race it is – who’s going to do the right thing.”

That’s why the community leaders are interested in what the candidates for chief think about community policing.

For years, Wichita has had community police officers – those who work closely with neighborhoods on police-oriented problems.

Each of the department’s 38 beats across the city has a community police officer.

Kevass Harding, pastor at Dellrose United Methodist Church, was a Wichita police officer during the early 1990s, when community policing was starting.

Although he wasn’t a community officer, he saw the effort’s positive effect. That’s why he wants to see community policing expand far beyond assigning certain officers to the role.

“It needs to be part of the training for all officers going through the academy,” said Harding, who is black. “It needs to be part of the culture of our police department.

“I would love to see our next police chief take that initiative.”

That would create an atmosphere where officers were seen as part of the community, he added.

“It would be a hands-on approach,” Harding said. “That means rolling up their sleeves and making contact with people.”

Dotson said he has seen community policing work well in St. Mark’s neighborhood.

“We can say, ‘Hey, we’re having this event. Could you come and meet some people?’ ” he said. “The community sees the police officer as a person who is there to help.

“It’s all about relationships.”

Johnson noted that the beat officer for the area around the CORE headquarters, near Ninth and Grove, is good about talking to people, but added, “I do know there are officers who are profiling. I can see them profiling.”

Now 28, Johnson said he has been profiled several times, including by both white and black officers during an incident in 2005. He wants to see the new chief direct the officers away from that kind of conduct.

“Instead of watching what these kids are doing,” he said, “go talk to them. Sometimes they can say, ‘Hey, I know you’re on the run. I could arrest you, but you need to stop making these dumb decisions.’ ”

Contreras, president of Kansas People’s Action, a diverse group that’s seeking independent political power in the state, said the new chief must lead a “return to mutual respect.”

“Not every young black kid is a drug dealer,” he said. “Not every young brown kid is a gang member, not every Hispanic man is an immigrant.

“There needs to be training on cultural, language and generational differences.”

He recalled intervening in a situation where an officer kept yelling commands in English to an elderly Hispanic woman.

“I kept telling him, ‘She can’t understand what you’re saying,’ ” he said. “Yelling doesn’t help.”

Contreras, 36, a Wichita native, said the Hispanic population will also be anxious to see how the new chief is going to handle immigration matters.

He noted that President Obama is expected to issue an executive order that will give some relief on those issues, including reuniting families and reducing deportation.

“But it also comes down to the local level on how it’s enforced,” Contreras said.

Body-mounted cameras

Finding a chief who is willing for the police to be held accountable is also important, community leaders said.

Johnson is among a number of leaders who are calling for Wichita’s police officers to wear cameras. In last week’s meeting, Brewer said he would encourage the City Council and Layton to find a way to make that happen.

Dotson, the St. Mark pastor, said the department needs to have greater transparency, particularly in dealing with officer-involved shootings.

“What kind of investigating process goes on?” he said. “We also need to know how they deal with officers who have a history of using excessive force.”

Contreras said there must be a citizen review board “with power to do something, something with teeth in it.”

“Not just an advisory board,” he added, “but one that can actually implement changes.”

Dotson said the time is right for bringing about changes.

“This is one of those moments that we can learn from Ferguson,” he said. “You can’t have a police force that doesn’t represent the community and not expect there to be that type of unrest.

“It starts with the relationship of community understanding – of the whole, diverse community. Law enforcement doesn’t need to treat the citizens like they’re the enemy.”

This story was originally published August 31, 2014 at 10:16 PM with the headline "Community leaders want diverse viewpoints in seeking new Wichita police chief."