Wichita police need policy on use of ‘confidential’ database

Wichita city attorney Jennifer Magana recently concluded that the city is violating no local, state or federal law by keeping a limited-access database of 486 “confidential” Police Department files. That legal blessing, while surely a relief at City Hall, highlights the need for a policy to explain and guide such selectively private record keeping.

Magana referred to the informal name of the database, “confidential files,” as a “misnomer” that “invites a misconception that these files are ‘secretive.’” But that language seems apt, given that the database includes “sensitive” cases, some dating back to the 1980s, involving police officers, city employees or “well-known” or “high-profile” individuals.

The files involve domestic violence, suicide, rape, aggravated indecent liberties and other crime investigations, Magana wrote. She also noted the inclusion of some reports of Police Department employees misusing access to criminal files – confirmation of the risk in allowing all 800-plus department employees access to all police reports. In contrast, access to the “confidential files” is limited to 92 people across five agencies or departments.

“This practice is similar to those by which other organizations store medical, personnel and financial records,” Magana noted.

She emphasized that limiting access to the database internally does not prevent access to cases by police employees or others with legitimate need to see them, and that the files are all subject to disclosure under the regular legal processes, including the Kansas Open Records Act or court order.

But who says which cases deserve such limited access, and for how long? And who decides which individuals are “well-known” or “high-profile” – and which aren’t? Such questions raise concerns about special treatment, especially if supervisors have been able to designate their own files as “confidential.”

City Manager Robert Layton, who had assigned Magana to review the files in response to open-records requests from media and residents, acknowledged the need “to develop a policy to make it clear on what records can be put into the limited-access file and what can’t.”

Layton took another welcome message from the review process, promising to “make it clear who is responsible for that designation and that we don’t use the internal limited-access file as a mechanism to not share information with the public or with the media.”

So add another item to the to-do list for incoming Wichita Police Chief Gordon Ramsay.

If the city considers it necessary to limit access to hundreds of police files, it needs to be clear on how such a database is to be managed and whose cases merit inclusion.

This story was originally published January 4, 2016 at 6:07 PM with the headline "Wichita police need policy on use of ‘confidential’ database."