Public incident report leaves public guessing

Interim Wichita Police Chief Nelson Mosley said that the police want to be transparent regarding the Jan. 3 police shooting of John Paul Quintero. “We strive for open communications,” Mosley said last week. But the public incident report on the shooting released this week by the city of Wichita is about as far from being transparent as possible – 4 1/2 of its five pages are blacked out. Release of these open records is routine (though the amount of redaction varies). If city officials expect citizens to trust the official process for dealing with fatal encounters involving officers, they’ll need to be much more forthcoming with the facts. – Rhonda Holman

This story was originally published January 14, 2015 at 3:31 PM.