Instead of defunding, Wichita’s budget would give millions more to police
In the midst of a budget shortfall and a national movement calling to defund police, Wichita’s proposed city budget increases police funding by millions of dollars — and cuts nearly everything else.
To shore up a $50 million deficit over the next two and a half years, City Manager Robert Layton plans to privatize several city services, including operations of Century II Performing Arts & Convention Center and the animal shelter’s drop-off program for strays.
The city took drastic measures to save money in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, furloughing workers, cutting staff, closing swimming pools and limiting in-person services. Libraries, golf courses and arts take hits in next year’s proposed budget and, for the first time since 2005, Housing and Community Service would lose all of its support from the city’s $247.7 million general fund.
While sales tax collection and some other revenue streams are expected to take a hit next year, the city’s general fund revenue is actually projected to grow by $2.8 million from 2019 levels and $6.3 million from 2020’s post-pandemic number, due primarily to property tax increases tied to rising valuations.
Layton said the city can’t cut all departments back to 2019 levels because it would ignore some of the city’s highest priorities, such as street maintenance.
Local protesters and longtime police accountability activists have called the move “tone deaf” and are pressuring the City Council to divert money from police to other city services that deal directly with the root causes of many crimes, like housing and transportation insecurity, drug addiction, domestic violence, water and sewer shutoffs, mental illness, poverty and hunger.
“If we address the issues head-on, we would see from that a decrease in crime,” Andrew Hubbard, a local activist, told the City Council last week.
Police spending more than doubled from 2000 to 2019, rising to $90.8 million in 2019. Next year’s budget would increase that by another $7.3 million. That money, spread over two years, adds 13 officers, three lieutenants, four sergeants and six detectives while the rest of city government is under a hiring freeze.
During the past several years the city has experienced near-record levels of violent crime and a 2017 police staffing report called for hiring additional officers. Resident input during budget preparation has also called for more investment in public safety.
The proposed police spending increase has touched off a spate of protests in downtown Wichita where protest leaders have been arrested multiple times on what they say are trumped-up charges.
Police said in an Aug. 1 news release that the department had been investigating protest activity occurring in downtown since July 29 that included blocking traffic and allegations of protesters causing disturbances, vandalism, battery and aggravated assault with a gun.
The department said that it “has always supported” people’s right to protest but contends that those involved in the downtown protests “refuse to demonstrate lawfully.”
Wichita police have offered no further specifics of last week’s arrests beyond a readout of the charges.
The arrests have touched off a social media firestorm, with petitions both for and against defunding Wichita police circulating and a fundraiser started to bail protesters out of jail. A pro-police counter-protest called “Back Our Blue” is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Tuesday at Century II’s Kennedy Place, just before the City Council will vote on the budget.
Much of the animus from both groups has been aimed at Layton, who oversees the day-to-day operations of the city government and is responsible for preparing the annual budget.
Project Justice ICT, a local activist group, protested outside Layton’s house and wrote profanity-laced comments about him in sidewalk chalk downtown.
Back Our Blue’s Facebook organizer Hollie Johanson wrote on the event page that “Project ICT has caught the ear of the city manager who has always been in favor of cutting the Police Budget.”
Layton did not attend the City Council meeting Tuesday. A city official said he was on personal leave all week.
As the budget decision draws near, attention has shifted from Layton to the City Council and Mayor Brandon Whipple, as the ultimate decision to approve the budget rests squarely on their shoulders.
“Ultimately, it’s up to us to make the decision we feel is in the best interest of the community,” Whipple said. “What we saw in the first budget isn’t the final word. There are still a lot of changes that are on the table.”
City Council decision looms large
A majority of the City Council contacted by The Eagle on Friday said they don’t favor defunding police and reallocating police money to other services. But council members generally agree that the city should re-think policing and do a better job of addressing social ills.
Whipple, who campaigned on adding police officers and was endorsed by the Wichita Fraternal Order of Police, said he doesn’t think “punishing” the police department by cutting its funds is the proper approach to reform.
The Wichita Fraternal Order of Police recently donated $2,500 to Whipple’s wife’s political action committee — Wichita’s Future PAC — which collected donations from attendees at Whipple’s inauguration gala.
Whipple said the donations and endorsement don’t have any influence on his stance on the police budget and said that the added positions, which account for most of the increase, were approved before he was mayor.
“To be honest, I never actually connected the two until you just brought it up.” Whipple said of the contribution and Tuesday’s budget decision.
“My goal is to work towards better policy for Wichita. I think we can get the type of policing the community came together and asked for in the wake of the protests with the various community organizations and invest in social services that will hopefully cut down on crime in general.”
Instead of making any cuts to police, he said, he plans to ask the council to earmark an additional $400,000 in the budget for domestic violence prevention and addiction treatment. He hasn’t said where that money will come from but he said he will have the details worked out by Tuesday.
Vice Mayor Cindy Claycomb and City Council member Jeff Blubaugh said they too are against cutting the police budget.
“I’m not in favor of defunding the police,” Claycomb said. “I am in favor of providing social services. I don’t know that the city should provide all those social services, but if you look at our budget, ... we provide funding to social service providers that really help them leverage the projects they’re working on.”
Claycomb said the increase in officer numbers is misleading because the positions were already previously budgeted as non-departmental expenses that were covered by $2.88 million shifted from the capital improvements fund, which comes from a mix of city fees.
“Those 26 positions were in the budget and funded and all we did this year was make an accounting move,” she said.
Although the positions were funded, many went unfilled in 2020. One lieutenant, two sergeants and seven detectives have been promoted from within the department. None of the 13 officer positions have been filled, Wichita police spokesman Officer Charley Davidson said Monday.
Next year’s budget would pay for those positions out of the general fund.
At the time those positions were added to the budget, growing the police force was a top priority for the city, Claycomb said.
“There was a call from the community to do that,” she said. “Our community asked us to do that. They said we would like to see more officers.”
Blubaugh said the city should continue following a staffing study from 2017 that called for adding officers. But he said he would be in favor of shifting some officers from traffic control to community policing and investigations units to help solve the city’s near-record levels of violent crime.
“I think we need to maybe maneuver some things within WPD,” he said. “Some of these other issues like mental health, I think the city of Wichita can be a champion to the county and the state to try and identify how we can remedy some of these situations and help some of these people who don’t need to be in a jail cell.”
Much of the money for social services comes from federal grants that the city redistributes. Next year’s budget calls for cutting entirely the city’s contribution to Housing and Community Services, from $165,968 last year to zero dollars.
City Council member and longtime police-reform advocate Brandon Johnson said many of the areas where activists want to see improvement, such as homeless outreach and sending social workers to respond to some 911 calls, fall on the police department. Any substantial changes would require time and additional money that the city doesn’t have during this budget cycle.
“So by Tuesday I doubt there’s a huge shift (of those services) outside the department or something like that,” he said.
Major changes would have to come at a later date, he said, and he hopes community activists and organizations will continue trying to shape those changes. For now, the City Council plans to work with Police Chief Gordon Ramsay to bolster its existing programs, he said.
“We’ve definitely heard them (protesters and activists), and we’re working towards making sure those priorities happen,” he said. “Some of the technicality stuff, you know, they may not be happy with us, . . . but we definitely get the gist of what they’re saying.”
Protesters remain skeptical
Some city officials, including Ramsay, Whipple and Johnson, have publicly supported protesters’ calls for police reform in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
City officials have held one-on-one meetings with protesters and attended rallies. Whipple created a civil rights advisory committee to address local issues of race relations and the police department.
But Tuesday’s budget meeting will be the city’s first opportunity to take action on the protesters’ demands. Many protesters remain skeptical that the city will put words into action.
“We the people have serious concerns regarding this council’s habit of giving platitudes publicly then ignoring citizen voter voices once you actually vote,” Maurice “Pastor Mo” Evans told the City Council last week.
“Instead of listening to the people you actually work for, when they ask for change, you explain why you unilaterally made a decision for us without our input,” he said. “When we get justifiably angry, then you ask for input — but ignore it. When we get specific and ask who’s accountable, the blame is shifted. . . . Something has to change.”
Even within the new police budget, spending priorities appear to be out of step with protesters’ demands for police accountability. The budget calls for a 23% cut from last year for the Professional Standards Bureau, a division of the police department that investigates hundreds of complaints of police misconduct reported each year.
Whipple said he was not able to answer why that cut was made because Ramsay was off work Friday and Layton was on vacation.
“I honestly cannot answer for that at this time,” he said Friday. “It’s a complex budget with a lot of moving parts, and I think those two should be available (Tuesday) to explain it (to the council).”
Last year, Professional Standards investigated 268 complaints made by civilians and 247 internal complaints filed by department employees. Of the 515 complaints, 55, or 10.7%, were “sustained,” meaning “the allegation is supported by sufficient evidence to justify a reasonable conclusion of guilt.” Of those, five civilian complaints were sustained in 2019, according to Wichita Police Department data.
Johnson said he could not explain the cut to Professional Standards but said Ramsay has vowed to take police misconduct complaints seriously.
“I haven’t talked to Chief Ramsay about that (cut), so I can’t get into details,” he said. “But I can say that Chief Ramsay committed after the barbecue in 2016 to making sure that there was also some outside eyes looking at our department.”
On Monday, Officer Charley Davidson said the decrease is an accounting move that took the department’s public information division out of the professional standards bureau’s budget, Davidson said.
“It was decreased, but it was just a move of budget items,” Davidson said. “There was no decrease in staffing or services or anything different. It was just a reallocation of budget to another location.”
Protester leaders arrested
Gabrielle Griffie, a Wichita protest organizer and small business owner, said the budget is an insult. At 24 years old, Griffie owns a vintage clothing and accessories shop in downtown Wichita and is the executive director of Project Justice ICT, a group that has been protesting since the death of George Floyd, a Black Minnesota man who died after police pinned him to the pavement with a knee on his neck for several minutes.
Project Justice ICT has recently ramped up its protests in response to the budget, marching through downtown streets chanting, blocking traffic and writing messages in sidewalk chalk.
Griffie was arrested by Wichita police twice in the past week on charges of unlawful assembly and other municipal violations. She says the arrests are a “scare tactic” to thwart further protests.
She said police didn’t explain the charges when she was arrested.
Davidson said the arrests are still active investigations and that the department cannot comment further. In an Aug. 10 news release, the Wichita Police Department said Griffie was arrested “on charges of unlawful assembly and aggressive or harassing contact prohibited and defacement or damage to property by graffiti.”
Multiple times since late May, thousands of protesters have shut down entire intersections in the city. They have blocked traffic and shouted and caused confrontations. But only a handful have been arrested.
“All my life I have lived in Wichita,” Griffie told the City Council last week, after her first arrest. “But as I continue the work of justice, the work of freedom in the city, I feel so discouraged that such a desire comes over me as to pack up and leave and never look back at this city.
“This is a predicament that you face with hundreds of young people in this city, especially young people of color, who are starting to believe that Wichita really is a city for the old, the white, the rich and the conservative.”
Other speakers at last week’s City Council meeting criticized the city’s response to recent protests in Wichita.
The protests in Wichita have been mostly peaceful and police have mostly stayed out of the way. But in early June, back-to-back protest rallies at 21st and Arkansas turned violent after demonstrators broke a storefront window one night and looted a QuikTrip on another. Police in riot gear fired flash grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets to break up crowds of protesters. Officers were hit with debris and shot at with live ammunition.
In two nights of chaos, Wichita police fired more than 75 non-lethal bullets and canisters at protesters. The department also purchased $62,000 in protective equipment after someone shot at the SWAT team.
When the police department issued a response to a list of demands in June, the department touted its existing police training, policies and practices while opposing calls to end qualified immunity and to grant the Citizens’ Review Board the authority to issue subpoenas to investigate police misconduct.
Protests in Wichita had largely died down following the arrest and release of two Black men — Michael Boston Jr. and Rashawn Mayes Jr. — on suspicion of incitement of a riot. They were released after it was reported the arrests stemmed from a social media post they — and hundreds of other people — shared on Facebook. Neither man has been charged with a crime.
Then the city released its budget proposal, with policing receiving by far the largest portion (39.6%) of the city’s general fund.
Juanita Ridge, a longtime advocate of criminal justice reform and volunteer with several local organizations, urged the City Council to stop growing the police department.
“Not that we don’t need police — but communities like ours are over-policed,” she said. “Not only do we have the Wichita Police Department, but we have the Sedgwick County (Sheriff’s Office), we have the Highway Patrol, and we’re inundated with police.”