Police must build trust

As demonstrated at Monday night’s public forum at Century II, Wichita has a trust deficit between its Police Department and some of its residents that can’t be fixed by more of the same.

City Manager Robert Layton moderated the sometimes tense event and will hire the next police chief. If he felt he got more community engagement than he bargained for, he didn’t show it. Of course, the heat also shed light on how each of the two finalists would handle the pressure of the job’s demand to be an articulate communicator and an eager listener as well as an effective administrator.

It’s risky to assume that the couple hundred people in attendance, let alone the aggressive questioners, were accurately representing the citizenry. Many of those who stayed away likely have no complaints about law enforcement and no specific expectations for a successor to Chief Norman Williams, who retired a year ago.

But it would be unwise for Layton, the City Council and the next chief to discount the activists and other concerned residents and their questions, many of them loaded with the anger stoked by several cases of fatal shootings of individuals by police over several years.

Terri Moses, who was deputy police chief in Wichita for 18 years before becoming executive director of safety services for USD 259 in 2013, was cast in the role of defender of the status quo. That’s not fair, as she cannot be considered responsible either for all decisions during Williams’ 14 years as chief nor the credibility issue that clouded his retirement. It was a tough crowd for Moses, who also could have been more specific in her answers about modern policing and her goals for the department. If she wins the job, to further her impressive career by becoming Wichita’s first female police chief, she’ll need to make a clear commitment to transparency.

Joel Fitzgerald, the police chief of Allentown, Pa., since 2013, had the easier task of making a good first impression, and took advantage of it. He hit on an ongoing problem for Wichita in mentioning the damage done when investigations of officers’ alleged misconduct drag on for years. As an African-American who said he’d been stopped by officers without explanation, he also had special credibility in vowing not to tolerate racial profiling. He said he’d already identified some technology needs.

For all of both candidates’ emphasis on community policing’s benefits – Moses was able to say she was very involved in starting it in Wichita – the forum underscored that more communication, training and trust are needed for community policing to be effective citywide, especially in some predominantly African-American and Hispanic neighborhoods.

Wichita’s next police chief will have to be as front and center as the two finalists for the job were at the forum, not just managing people and budgets behind a desk but addressing suspicions and forging relationships out in the community. And change must be not just discussed but delivered.

For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman

This story was originally published September 1, 2015 at 7:06 PM with the headline "Police must build trust."