Mayor Whipple pushes for extra layer of oversight at Wichita Police Department

Mayor Brandon Whipple says it’s time for elected officials to step in and provide additional oversight of the Wichita Police Department amid an escalating feud between police leaders and the city manager’s office.

The composition of the proposed task force and the scope of its authority remain to be seen. But some City Council members aren’t convinced the committee is necessary.

Whipple, a Democrat, says he and two fellow council members will serve on the task force alongside a city lawyer and Wichita’s newly hired internal auditor, Kristina Rose.

“We have a lot to prove to the public,” council member Jeff Blubaugh, a Republican, told The Eagle.

“We’ve got some public trust issues right now, so we need to be as transparent as possible and we need to ask the type of questions that people are asking in the coffee shops and around the water coolers in Wichita.”

Whipple announced plans for the task force at a Monday news conference where City Manager Robert Layton said the police department has not moved quickly enough to address the problems outlined in a 2021 audit that found the WPD is missing evidence in homicides, rapes and other criminal cases.

Layton said he was unaware of the extent of the problem until last month when his office was looking into issues with the department’s records management system.

But the manager’s office has also come under heightened scrutiny after accusations from Ramsay and his deputy chiefs that Layton lied about when he became aware of racist and inappropriate text messages exchanged between members of the SWAT team.

“People will legitimately ask, if the manager’s office is investigating something — whatever they might be investigating — but they are also accused of wrongdoing, how do you overcome that?” Whipple said in an interview with The Eagle.

Creating a task force “would allow us to, at least on a temporary basis, go around some of the processes that we currently have in place where we’re supposed to go through the manager for everything,” Whipple said.

City ordinances allow the mayor to create a task force without a majority vote of the council. But Whipple said he’s consulting the legal department to find out if a four-member City Council majority’s approval would further empower the committee’s investigative efforts.

Information sharing

Blubaugh, the council’s longest-serving member, said issues with information sharing between the manager’s office and council have plagued Wichita in recent years.

“I’ve been on the council almost 10 years now. And one of the biggest issues that I’ve come across is trying to get the same information the city manager has,” Blubaugh said.

“We knew all these issues with the evidence storage in 2021. It looks like Chief Ramsay put together a good memo. He put together a plan. And I don’t understand how it doesn’t make it in the budget — how it falls off the cliff.”

Meanwhile, a letter sent last week on behalf of Ramsay’s former executive team, including two current deputy chiefs, calls on Layton to resign and seeks more than $2.1 million to settle a threatened lawsuit against the city. The letter claims Layton conspired with the city’s HR director and the police union to thwart the deputy chiefs’ efforts to weed out bad actors in the department.

Layton has called the accusations in the letter “outrageous.” A committee report from the city manager’s office blamed police leadership — including Ramsay and Deputy Chiefs Jose Salcido and Chet Pinkston — for mishandling the internal investigation into the text message scandal.

Ramsay’s administration did little to discipline the officers. Multiple officers were later suspended by Interim Chief Lem Moore and Layton after an Eagle investigation into inaction by the city.

At the Monday news conference, Layton handed out copies of the 407-page executive summary of the police audit, along with emails and memos shared within the Wichita Police Department and from Ramsay to Layton.

Layton said he wants to cooperate with efforts to strengthen oversight over the police department.

“If they have areas they want to drill down in, I don’t have a problem with that at all,” Layton said. “I appreciate their concerns and you know, I’m here to serve.”

Potential members

Whipple said he will likely come forward with more concrete plans for the task force in the next week. He’s still determining who he’d like to appoint to the committee.

The mayor said Blubaugh is a natural choice because he “isn’t afraid to ask tough questions.” Other potential appointees include Mike Hoheisel or Brandon Johnson, who serves on CPOST, the state board that regulates police officers.

Bryan Frye, who accused Ramsay’s former executive team of extorting the city and whose name was later added to the police leaders’ demand letter, likely won’t be included.

“We’ve got one member who’s now being sued for taking a side in this conflict within the police department without frankly having all the information, so it would be tough to put someone like that on there,” Whipple said.

Frye said he’s not convinced a task force of elected leaders would do much to strengthen WPD oversight, and that it could leave the four council members not on the committee out of the loop.

“I don’t know that we need a separate layer of government to do something that we should be doing anyways,” Frye said.

“My biggest concern is, I want to make sure that we all have the same flow of information. Each member of the council is an equal member and we should all have the same information flow that each council member has. Is (a task force) going to get in the way of that? That’s a concern I have.”

Council member Becky Tuttle said she also has more questions than answers about the proposed task force.

“I don’t know what the purpose of it is, what the mission of it is, who’s going to be on it,” Tuttle said. “What are the expectations? How will we know if it’s successful? So, at this point, I can’t say if I’m supportive or not.”

Cultural assessment

The proposed task force comes as Jensen Hughes, a top law enforcement consulting firm, begins its first round of meetings with City Council members. The firm, which recommended sweeping reforms and accountability after the Breonna Taylor and George Floyd police killings, was selected from a pool of nine applicants to conduct a cultural assessment of WPD.

City Hall requested the assessment after an Eagle investigation showed the department initially gave little punishment to SWAT team members who sent each other text messages that contained racist, sexist and homophobic remarks and made light of killing people. The scope of the review was broadened after former interim Chief Lem Moore promoted an officer who is being sued for killing an unarmed civilian.

Jensen Hughes’ report is expected to be completed in 2023 and cost $214,000. It will serve as a roadmap for selecting the city’s next police chief.

Layton said he hopes an open selection process with ample community input on the next chief will start to restore faith in the police department and City Hall.

“My greatest hope comes in the area of the new chief. We’ll make an announcement the very first part of next week on the finalists for that position, and we’ll have a very open process for the selection of the chief,” Layton said.

This story was originally published October 2, 2022 at 4:37 AM.