Wichita OKs police contract that maintains secrecy for officers accused of wrongdoing

The names of Wichita police officers accused of wrongdoing will continue to be kept secret under a new police union contract approved unanimously by the Wichita City Council on Tuesday.

Community activists say the contract, which upholds longstanding protections for officers disciplined for serious misconduct or use of excessive force, undermines ongoing policy discussions about accountability in the wake of high-profile police killings nationwide.

“Hiding this information from the citizens of Wichita only deepens the distrust and suspicions that the cover-up of these actions is more important than being honest,” said LaWanda Deshazer, a Kansas NAACP youth adviser.

She said officers’ names should be released whenever they’re involved in excessive force complaints and when they discharge their weapons.

City and police union officials say releasing the names of officers along with their disciplinary records would be inconsistent with how they treat other city workers.

“The FOP is not in favor of creating second-class employees by having our members have their personnel records open to the public when other personnel working for the city, theirs is not,” said Hans Asmussen, a Fraternal Order of Police representative and Wichita police detective.

The contract also committed an additional $9 million over three years that had not been budgeted for the Wichita Police Department. The extra spending, supplemented by money from the American Rescue Plan Act, will help fund pay raises and a $1,000 retention bonus for commissioned officers.

After several community members spoke about their concerns with the proposed contract, District 3 Council Member Jared Cerullo pointedly asked Asmussen to respond.

“Do you believe any part of this contract upholds a veil of secrecy or protects bad cops? Do you believe that,” he asked.

“No, I do not,” Asmussen said.

Cerullo: “Tell me why.”

“Because if the department was covering up for bad cops, then why would the FOP really need to exist as a representative for disciplinary actions?”

Disclosure allowed

State law allows the city to release disciplinary records of officers to the public but does not require disclosure, leaving the decision to the discretion of the police chief and city manager, who are bound to uphold the police union contract approved by the City Council.

Chief Gordon Ramsay has gone on the record against releasing the names of officers involved in use-of-force incidents unless they are charged with a crime, which almost never happens in Wichita, Eagle research has found.

The only officer whose use of force would have been disclosed under those conditions in the past several decades is Dexter Betts, a former Wichita officer who injured a child when he shot at a dog he said was charging him. A district court judge dismissed the criminal assault case, but the state has appealed to the Kansas Court of Appeals.

Wichita police records show that in 2020, 265 citizen complaints were lodged against individual officers. Just four of those complaints were sustained — a rate of 1.5%.

City Manager Robert Layton has also said he does not want to publicly release the names of officers who are disciplined.

Instead, Layton has been advocating for the names to be released — under seal — to the Citizen’s Review Board. Its members cannot take any binding action and are not allowed to publicly discuss the cases they review. The board is only allowed to review cases that have been closed by law enforcement.

Walt Chappell, a member of the city’s Racial Profiling Advisory Board, has been advocating for more police disclosure for decades without much success.

“There has been for years a systematic effort to deny that we do anything wrong in this police department,” Chappell said.

He asked the council to amend the FOP contract so that accusations of excessive force and other serious misconduct cannot be shielded from the public.

“We’d like to know, if you beat somebody up, who was it that did the beating? What was their excuse for claiming they had a right to beat this person to a pulp?” Chappell said.

“They get to hide behind a blue wall of silence.”

Chappell said the department is undermined by policies that reinforce protective secrecy around serious officer misconduct.

Layton said approving the police union contract doesn’t undercut efforts to enhance transparency and accountability.

“It was always intended that it would be a change and would require an ordinance change by the council in terms of no longer keeping confidential some of their findings and allowing them to report publicly [on complaints that have been sustained],” Layton said.

Since its inception nearly four years ago, the 12-member Citizen’s Review Board has been made up of members appointed by Layton. He said a city ordinance strengthening review oversight could also provide for more diverse representation on the board.

Layton said he expects city staff to put forward an ordinance pertaining to the review board in either February or March.

Reform

Some speakers complained that Wichita’s police union contract protected the officer in Wichita’s most recent high-profile police killing, Justin Rapp.

Rapp shot 28-year-old Andrew Finch, an unarmed man, after he stepped out on his porch in December 2017. Police had surrounded Finch’s residence after as part of a swatting hoax perpetrated by a group of people unknown to Finch that had been involved in an online video game dispute.

Rapp’s name did not become public until five months after the shooting, when he testified in a separate federal court case.

“With this policy, we would have never found out who Officer Rapp was,” Ann Jones said.

Although public disclosure of the names of officers who shoot people appears unlikely after Tuesday’s vote, city officials say they are committed to appearing more transparent.

Layton has been in talks with the Citizens Review Board for several months about whether disciplinary records should be confidential.

But he has been criticized for a presentation he gave to the board last week, where he provided a rundown of how cities across the country are handling disclosure of officer names.

The report was 20 years old, and many of the cities — including Minneapolis and San Francisco — mentioned by Layton have changed their policies in the past two decades.

“There have been legitimate concerns raised by both the public and the Citizen’s Review Board, and instead of taking those concerns seriously, concerns that are life and death situations, Bob (Layton) has cited a 20-year-old study to justify the policies in this contract regarding personnel file confidentiality,” Jones said.

This story was originally published December 14, 2021 at 5:52 PM.