Should Wichita police name cops who shoot people? Citing death threats, board says no
A public advisory board is no longer recommending that the Wichita Police Department release names of officers involved in shootings, citing concerns over potential death threats to the families of officers.
“I’m not talking about hiding facts or anything, but when there’s those death threats, I don’t know how I can look at their family and say, ‘Well, I’m going to release the name,’” Police Chief Gordon Ramsay said. “I struggle with that.”
Ramsay’s concerns of officer safety helped persuade the Citizen Review Board to no longer recommend that the department name officers involved in shootings and other so-called critical incidents. The board changed its position after previously suggesting that police create a new policy where names would generally be released.
The board in August recommended that police create a policy requiring timely release of officer names, but it allowed the police chief to withhold an identity when he believed there was a safety or security concern.
Instead of sticking with its original recommendation, the board last month went with Ramsay’s proposal — releasing some information about the officer, but not the name — such as their age, gender, race, years with the department, discipline history in use-of-force cases and previous involvement in shootings.
“Oftentimes, that’s what people want to know: Has this officer been involved in other shootings? What’s their discipline history? Really, that’s the purpose behind knowing the name,” Ramsay said.
Two men have been killed in officer-involved shootings in Wichita in the past week.
Fred Burton, 56, was shot and killed early Thursday morning after shooting at police during a SWAT standoff. Police said Burton was going through a mental health crisis and had fired more than 50 rounds through the walls of his apartment complex.
Robert Sabater, 49, was shot and killed early Monday morning in an incident involving multiple police officers and Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office deputies. Police said Sabater had been “sporadically” firing a gun outside a home before pointing it at officers.
None of the law enforcement officers involved in the two deadly shootings have been identified.
Public scrutiny
James Thompson, a civil rights attorney who has sued the city in previous police shootings, told The Eagle that names should be released unless if there is a specific threat against an officer.
“Just saying generally there’s this threat out there, but you can’t point to anything specific about why there may be a threat against one of the officers, that’s hogwash,” he said. “Our officers should be protected from danger, but they should not be protected from public scrutiny.”
“Since Ferguson, we have had issues with increased violence toward police officers,” Thompson said. “Unions use that, sometimes with good cause, to withhold names of officers. The problem with that is we don’t have transparency.”
The board considered the case of Officer Justin Rapp who shot and killed Andrew Finch on Dec. 28, 2017, after responding to a fake 911 call. The department never identified Rapp as the shooter in the swatting case. His name circulated on social media for months before he testified in a court hearing that he fired the shot.
“The officer’s name was plastered all over social media — it might have even been on a billboard — and the department was not doing anything, it wasn’t releasing the name,” said board chairman Jay Fowler. “At that point, it creates a situation that’s problematic because it looks like you’re now — hiding is not the right word — but you’re not responding to information that’s already there. ... I’m not sure that helps with transparency.”
Ramsay said there is a greater public demand for an officer’s name when a shooting is controversial, and that he wants to advocate for officers. He also said his own family was targeted by threats related to the swatting case.
“They said when my kids walked out the door, they’re going to be shot,” he said. “And so at some point I have to advocate for officers and their families as well. And that’s the balance we need to find with transparency and releasing information, but if people are making death threats to an officer that was involved in one of those, I think I have a duty to think about their safety and their family’s safety.”
When officers receive threats, the department investigates and performs a threat assessment, Ramsay said. Some investigations result in criminal charges.
Board changes its vote
Citizen Review Board members do not have the authority to create policies for the department. They can only advise the police chief, who is not required to follow their suggestions.
The board took up the issue of releasing officer names shortly after it was formed last year. Before creating the first policy recommendation in August, the board reviewed the findings of a survey conducted by Wichita police.
Of the 27 major city police departments that responded to the survey, 19 departments, or about 70 percent, released officer names.
“I came from a state where we did release the names within so many hours,” said Ramsay, who was the police chief in Duluth, Minnesota, before taking the Wichita job in 2016. “I had seen the evolution of officer-involved shootings and how they become viral and in many cases very negative and threatening online.”
Though many board members seemed to support releasing officer names, they all voted to no longer recommend that names be released.
Board member Janet Miller suggested that officer names may become public regardless of whether the department releases them.
“Since those names are getting out there anyway, (I wonder) if a case couldn’t be made for if they would just be released right up front, it would eliminate some of that controversy and that whole idea about hiding,” Miller said. “ ... By not releasing the name, it did not keep the name from getting out there. They get out there anyway. And it just seems like not releasing it aggravates that.”
Releasing some information, but not a name, may make the situation worse, said board member Paul Kitchen.
“I think (releasing information other than the name) is just going to cause more controversy ... that’s just going to cause more questions that you can’t answer,” he said.
Board member Odell Harris Jr. said some people do want to know the race of officers in shootings, among other information, since there is a stigma in some areas of the city “that white cops kill black” men. The public is entitled to some information, and releasing that is not unreasonable, he said.
Board member Shaun Rojas said some people in the community see police as not being transparent when they don’t release the names of officers involved in shootings. But he wasn’t convinced that releasing their names is the only way to increase transparency while ensuring officer safety.
“I do think when (a police shooting) happens, when tensions are high, when (the name) is not given out, it’s seen as we’re not being forthcoming, we’re not being transparent, we’re not admitting that this happened,” he said.
Fowler said that police officers are public employees.
“We have to remember that our officers are in fact public employees, public officers, and that there is a public right to know at some level about what their police department ... is doing,” he said. “We can’t have an overarching confidentiality on a lot of things or we lose the public accountability.”
“To me, there is no officer legal entitlement to confidentiality about an act that the officer engaged in in the course of his or her duties.”
City lawsuit
Two decades ago, city lawyers agreed with Fowler.
In 1994, Officer Terry Fettke shot and killed Franchot “Corky” Mitchell in a gunfight. Mitchell had wounded Fettke’s partner, and the district attorney determined the shooting was justified. But the NAACP and Mitchell’s family raised questions of whether Fettke continued shooting at Mitchell after he was down. Mitchell was hit by 16 shots.
Fettke’s name was released to the media, despite city policy at the time forbidding it, according to court documents. The officer sued the city for stress damages, claiming that the release of his name had led to threats.
The Kansas Supreme Court in 1998 sided with city lawyers, who argued that Fettke, as a police officer, was “a public official with no right of privacy.”
The court stated that while it did not intend to minimize the the risk to officers, the facts of the case did not qualify as “imminent danger” of serious bodily harm. The ruling said that Rick Stone, who was the police chief at the time of the shooting, testified that dealing with threats is “just part of that police officer’s duty.”
Hindering lawsuits?
Thompson, the civil rights lawyer, argues that the public should have the names.
“Otherwise we’re just trusting the police to tell when they have a bad officer or not, and we have seen that that doesn’t work,” he said.
Without the officer’s name, it becomes difficult or impossible for the public to track data on officers involved in shootings — especially if an officer leaves the department and joins a new one, Thompson said. He said some people in the community will always trust police and others never will.
“They’re saying ‘trust us.’ We shouldn’t have to trust them — they work for us,” Thompson said. “We should trust them, but trust and verify.”
Thompson, who has sued the department before, said there is a two-year statute of limitation on filing a lawsuit against an officer. Without the name, the family or the lawyers for a family have a much more difficult time filing a lawsuit.
“The city’s purpose in not releasing those names is not officer safety as they want to claim, but to hinder or stop the filing of lawsuits,” he said.
In many cases, law enforcement officers involved in critical incidents are identified in court documents, such as probable cause affidavits that detail the legal justification for arresting and charging a suspect. But sometimes, the department redacts that information before it is released to the public.
“The chief of police is a good, good man, and he’s doing is best to walk the line between the needs of the community and the demands of the police union,” Thompson said. “He’s doing his best, I do believe.”
The union
It is unclear whether the department needs the approval of the officer union, the Fraternal Order of Police, to change the policy and whether or not the union would support a change. Union officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Ramsay has previously said he needs the union’s approval to release officer names, despite the Supreme Court ruling protecting the release of identities.
“The department has a long history of not releasing names of officers involved in shootings,” he said a week after the Dec. 28, 2017, swatting. “Any change in that practice requires negotiation with the labor contract and will have to be negotiated if that’s the case, or a state law change would trump that.”
The city had a chance to negotiate such a change with the union. But the City Council approved a new three-year contract in March that made no changes on the matter.
The contract includes a provision that any change to the department’s policies and procedures for critical incidents must first be approved by the city and the union. The police policy on critical incidents, including officer-involved shootings, makes no mention of publicly releasing names or other information about officers.
But a different policy on news and media relations, which is not listed in the critical incident section of the union contract, states that the police chief may release names of officers involved in critical incidents. According to that policy, the police chief already has the discretion to release names of officers involved in shootings.
At the board meeting, Miller asked Ramsay whether the city’s law department would support releasing some information on officers.
“State law allows it,” Ramsay said. “But they (city legal counsel) don’t want anything out. They don’t want any risk. ... Changes are risky. Attorneys are not about risk. They recommend against risk. ... This decision is mine, I own this one.”
This story was originally published May 29, 2019 at 12:00 AM.