Wichita police plan to ban kneeling on necks of handcuffed subjects, more policy changes

Wichita police plan to ban kneeling on necks of subjects who have been handcuffed, as well as several other policy changes protesters have called for.

A document provided by the Wichita Police Department to the Citizen’s Review Board on Thursday listed several proposed changes to the use of force policy, which has not been updated in seven years.

In addition to the ban on neck-kneeling for handcuffed subjects, the draft includes a duty to intervene for officers witnessing unethical behavior, a requirement to provide medical aid after deadly force is used and a general prohibition on shooting at vehicles. Those and other changes were added at the police chief’s request, according to the document.

The plan to change the department’s use of force policy comes after demonstrations over police brutality.

In Wichita and across the country, protests have sometimes turned violent in the wake of the death of George Floyd. Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, died after a white police officer in Minneapolis held him to the pavement with a knee on his neck. The officer has been fired and charged with murder. Three other officers have also been fired and charged in connection with Floyd’s death.

Protesters in Wichita have demanded that police adopt the initiatives of #8CantWait, a project from Campaign Zero that calls for police to take eight steps to decrease police killings, including banning choke holds and requiring de-escalation training. The organization says that data shows each policy results in fewer people being killed by police by between 5% and 25%.

The #8CantWait policies are:

The campaign website, www.8cantwait.org, lists Wichita as having only three of the #8CantWait policies: requiring a warning before shooting, implementing the use of force continuum and requiring comprehensive reporting.

Wichita police Capt. Chet Pinkston told the review board that all the #8CantWait topics are addressed in training, even if they aren’t codified in policy. Police Capt. Wendell Nicholson went through all eight points and how current WPD policies and training apply.

Nicholson said choke holds and strangleholds are not taught in training, and choke holds using a baton or other object is only permitted when deadly force is justified. A proposal to change the use of force policy would specifically ban kneeling on a neck while a suspect is handcuffed.

“Officers are prohibited from impeding normal breathing or blood circulation by applying pressure to the throat, neck or chest with the use of their knee or other object and while the individual is handcuffed,” the draft policy reads.

Nicholson said an officer may use their body weight to help handcuff a subject, but not after and “definitely not putting a knee on a neck.”

“It shouldn’t last no longer than it takes to get somebody in handcuffs,” he said. “As soon as they have handcuffs, they should be rolled over and sat up.”

Nicholson said a de-escalation policy has been implemented and it requires the use of certain techniques, including utilizing time, distance and communication. He said de-escalation has been a focus since 2016, when Gordon Ramsay became the police chief. The policy is not listed among the public policies on the department’s website.

Current policy requires a verbal warning before using any force, when practical, unless a warning would increase the danger for the officer or others. Under current policy, an officer cannot use deadly force if they don’t believe it is necessary. Department policy is consistent with the use of force continuum, he said. The department also requires officers to complete a report when they use force and supervisors must review the case.

Nicholson said duty to intervene has been part of the department’s ethics training, though it hasn’t been in policy. That would change under the proposal to rewrite the use of force policy.

The draft states:

“Officers are required to take an active approach to intervene to stop any unethical behavior or misconduct, when such conduct is being committed by another individual involved. Any officer present and observing another officer using force that he/she reasonably believes to be clearly beyond that which is objectively reasonable under the circumstances shall intercede to prevent the use of unreasonable force, if and when the officer has a realistic opportunity to prevent the level of unreasonable force being applied.”

Jay Fowler, the chairman of the review board, said duty to intervene “is critical to the success of a (use of force) policy like this.” He asked the police supervisors how they will ensure it becomes part of the department’s culture.

Sgt. Krys Henderson, a community response supervisor in Patrol East, said officers are already trained on the duty to intervene, though the training tends to focus on sexual harassment and not use of force.

“The hallmark has already kind of been there already,” he said. “But I think we need to emphasize that just a little bit more (on use of force issues) ... We’re not always perfect at that, but that’s something that as an organization and agency we want to get better at. We have to get better.”

Pinkston later said that “every single Wichita Police Department officer has been trained on duty to intervene” and that it “ is not a new concept” as someone who has been with WPD for 30 years.

“It was actually more of a response to liability — there are several court cases out there about duties to intervene,” Pinkston said.

He said that as a young officer, he told his fellow officers “if you see me doing something wrong, please stop me.” Now a bureau commander, he said he has asked all of his officers “how many of them think that if one officer in the Minneapolis incident would have had the courage to stop what was going, that we would not be in this position,” and if they would have preferred for another officer to step in.

“Most officers don’t want to mistreat citizens,” Pinkston said. “Most officers would ask their fellow officers to please make sure that if I’m crossing a line, you stop me.”

The policy proposal also creates a duty to render medical aid after any force is used. It states that “emergency medical attention will be immediately rendered, consistent with officer safety, following any police action which results in deadly force or non-deadly use of force.” Officers are to administer first aid or request emergency medical services.

Pinkston said the addition of the medical aid section is not a direct response to the death of Andrew Finch.

Finch, 28, was shot to death by a Wichita police officer responding to a fake call of a murder/hostage situation at the Finch home. The shooting drew national attention as the first documented fatal case of swatting.

On Tuesday, Lisa Finch told the City Council that her son did not receive medical attention after he was shot .

“My son was killed standing in front of the screen door, left laying there being denied medical treatment,” she said.

In a federal lawsuit against the city, the family claims that police “made no effort to ensure immediate life-saving medical treatment for Finch after the shooting. Finch was left to bleed out in the front hall of the house where he fell after the shooting.”

The lawsuit alleges police “intentionally failed to check Finch’s vitals, provide CPR, or transfer him to waiting paramedics. Instead, they stepped over and around Finch’s body, as he lay bleeding and struggling to breathe.”

The #8CantWait suggestion of banning shooting into moving vehicles is also addressed by the WPD policy proposal. Police have generally considered a moving vehicle to be a deadly weapon when it is traveling toward officers. But the draft change would no longer allow shooting at a vehicle in most cases where the vehicle itself is the only threat.

The proposed change is:

“Shooting at vehicles is prohibited, except when someone in the vehicle is using or threatening deadly force by means other than the vehicle itself, or the vehicle is being used as a weapon of mass destruction in an apparent act of terrorism. Officers should attempt to move out of the way of the vehicle if able to do so.”

The plan to restrict shooting at vehicles comes after at least three cases where Wichita police officers shot into moving vehicles in the past two years.

In November 2018, an officer shot at a car after the driver accelerated toward the police motorcycle during a chase. The driver was not hit by the bullets. He was arrested after a SWAT team and K-9 unit searched a nearby field.

In September 2019, an officer shot at a stolen Jeep in a McDonald’s drive-through after the driver accelerated toward the officer. Police had responded to a report of a stolen vehicle at the fast food restaurant. The driver and one of two passengers were shot by the officer. Three subjects were arrested after a pair of police pursuits.

In January 2019, officers attempted to arrest a man on warrants outside the probation office in downtown Wichita. The car accelerated toward two officers. They shot the driver, who later died.

The policy proposal also adds the language: “Officers are prohibited from using deadly force against individuals who pose a danger only to themselves.”

Henderson said the department wants to move quickly with updating the policy, “but we want to make sure it’s right, we want to make sure it’s all-inclusive before we put something out there and not miss anything. We want to make sure we have good buy-in.”

Board member Robert Thompson asked the police commanders about another proposal pitched by some protesters — defunding police. Pinkston said that as a public employee, he cannot discuss a political issue.

The Citizen’s Review Board has the power to make recommendations on police policy, but they are non-binding. Its members made no official recommendations on the use of force policy.