Police adequately disciplined for texting scandal, but more reforms needed | Our view
Four years after Wichita Police officers started throwing around racist, homophobic and trigger-happy text messages, and four months after Eagle reporters brought them to light, finally some appropriate discipline is being handed out to the officers involved.
That’s a step in the right direction.
But there’s still a long way to go before this community can put this nasty scandal behind us.
City Manager Robert Layton has ordered a comprehensive outside review of the department and its policies, the stated purpose of which is to try to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
As members of this community, we will expect — no, we demand — that the investigation be thorough, transparent and, to the maximum extent allowed by law, public.
Layton and interim Police Chief Lem Moore took a positive first step Thursday when they went before news reporters and detailed the disciplinary actions that are being taken with regard to the officers involved in the messages, which the city manager rightly characterized as racist, demeaning and inciting.
In this round, 13 officers came under scrutiny. Here’s what happened:
▪ Three resigned from the department while under investigation and are now outside the city’s reach to discipline.
▪ Two, who shared a grotesque meme of the George Floyd murder with a naked Black man superimposed over the officer who killed Floyd, will be suspended 15 days, the maximum for conduct unbecoming an officer. Those officers will also be required to complete a counseling program with a psychologist to be selected in consultation with two African-American community groups, the NAACP and the Wichita Ministerial League.
▪ One officer will receive a 15-day suspension for messages expressing sympathy with the “Three Percenters,” an extremist militia organization that advocates the violent overthrow of the government and figured prominently in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. That officer, who claimed not to have known the full extent of the Three Percenters’ militancy, will also be put on desk duty until he completes a fitness-for-duty review that will determine whether he continues to be employed by the department.
▪ Two officers will receive written reprimands for communications with a Sedgwick County Sheriff’s sergeant, since resigned, joking about killing suspects and mocking the concept of “de-escalation,” which police are trained in to reduce shootings and save lives.
▪ Four officers were initially given non-disciplinary coaching and mentoring, and no additional punishment is ordered.
▪ One was found to have done nothing wrong because his use of the term “Jamaican goony hook” was related to punches thrown in a boxing gym and were deemed neither racially inflammatory, nor offensive when taken in context.
Moore originally proposed the suspensions be for eight days. But Layton increased them from the chief’s recommendations.
As far as we can tell, the new punishments are adequate for the offenses committed.
But the city’s actions never would have happened without months of investigation by this newspaper into documents obtained by Eagle reporter Michael Stavola.
In short, the Wichita PD had swept the whole thing under the rug and only took significant action after getting caught.
And while we are proud of The Eagle’s role in dragging this mess out of City Hall and into the sunshine, it’s no way to run a police department or a government.
We anxiously await the results of the city manager’s investigation.
In the meantime, the City Council should take steps to strengthen civilian oversight of police operations.
The Citizens’ Review Board, the committee that’s supposed to supply that oversight, was designed by the council as little more than a police booster organization.
It lacks the access to information to investigate and the authority to substantially affect police disciplinary practices.
That, too, needs fixing.
This city deserves no less.
This story was originally published July 21, 2022 at 3:40 PM.