Police chief, city leaders respond to WPD report

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — Wichita’s police chief, city manager and mayor say they are ready to take action to improve the Wichita Police Department. They held a news conference Monday morning to discuss the findings of an extensive report that came out late Friday about the WPD.

“Until we have the trust of the community, we won’t have the cooperation of the community,” Police Chief Joe Sullivan said.

The City of Wichita hired Jensen Hughes to assess the police department. Mayor Brandon Whipple called Jensen Hughes one of the top firms in the country for this type of work.

City of Wichita responds

Wichita City Manager Robert Layton said the City would use the recommendations to provide a framework for the police chief.

“I intend to work with him and provide him necessary resources to build a 21st-century police department,” Layton said. “Such a department will be anchored in trusting relationships with police employees and community members.”

Layton was asked how members of the community will know that the WPD is making changes.

“I commit to the mayor, to the city council, to the community and to the police employees that we will implement the Jensen Hughes recommendations and that we’ll do it in a transparent process,” he said.

Sullivan said the report confirms his own assessment of the department since he started in December.

“This report will serve as a guide and a road map for myself and my command staff as we continue to take the steps necessary to make this very good department a great department,” he said. “I was gratified to read of the passion and desire that exists within this department to do just that.”

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The assessment

Edward Denmark is a subject-matter expert with Jensen Hughes and was actively involved in assessing the WPD. He was in law enforcement for 31 years and has been with Jensen Hughes since 2015.

“I’ve conducted several assessments with them ranging from issues in Louisville after the Breonna Taylor incident, worked with Minneapolis after the George Floyd incident, so we’ve been involved in some pretty significant assessments, and thankfully we’re not seeing the issues that we saw in some of the other places here in Wichita,” Denmark said.

Rob Davis, Jensen Hughes’ senior vice president, said the company’s people interviewed more than 90 people, including community members, City officials, and rank-and-file members of the WPD. They reviewed police policies, training, the cultural environment, the organizational chart, staffing and deployment. And they emailed a survey to hundreds of officers and professional staff members.

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Speed of change

“Let me be clear. Many of the recommendations in this report have or are already in the process of being instituted in terms of training, policy changes and procedural structure, discipline as well as the incorporation of new technology,” Sullivan said. “We certainly have not spent the last three months in the department sitting by waiting for the report, but we certainly welcome it.”

“The report definitely validates the actions we have taken and the changes we have made thus far and will continue to serve as a guide as we continue to move this department forward,” he said.

Davis and Denmark said their report includes things that need to be done sooner than later, but the community is not in danger in the meantime.

“As far as feelings of safety, basically, service, being able to respond to calls in a timely manner should be at the top of the priority list, and I think that’s something I know the chief … would like to address,” Denmark said. “And I know there’s things other members of the agency expressed that they’d like to see handled a little more effectively, just being able to make sure that the resources are getting to people when they pick up the phone and call should be a top priority.”

Davis said the City would have to set short-term, mid-term and long-term goals with the report’s recommendations. He said the city manager and police chief indicated they are paying close attention to those goals.

“They certainly are going to drive this forward as quickly as they can, but some things may come in a quicker time frame than others because if you are going to be strategic, you have to come up with a strategic plan,” he said.

Officers reviewing complaints

According to the Jensen Hughes report, because of the City’s contract with the union, an officer under investigation can see the investigative file. The file usually includes the complaint, witness statements, and all other evidentiary material.

“I can say from my experience it was unusual to see, which is why it was mentioned in the report,” Denmark said. “Just in terms of investigative integrity, it would just make sense that an employee be made to answer questions before necessarily knowing what the entire case is to get the most truthful perspective from the employee without it being tainted by their perceptions of what they think the evidence may be against them.”

Davis said it is an issue the City may want to address with the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP).

Understanding of community policing

The report said there is no consensus on what community policing is, how it should be implemented and how to measure outcomes. Also, patrol officers and supervisors sometimes feel they do all the work while community policing officers are unavailable to answer calls.

“I can bring all the technology I want to this department, but solving crime, the foundation, always relies on community cooperation and community reporting crime and reporting what they see, and cooperating and prosecutions, so it is the core function of policing,” Sullivan said.

“Doesn’t mean you don’t have community policing officers, but you have to ingrain in the department philosophy that every single member of this department, regardless of rank, regardless of assignment, whether or not they’re commissioned or professional staff, has a responsibility to perform community policing,” Sullivan said.

He said that means addressing citizens in all circumstances with respect, fairness and professionalism.

“In terms of the community policing program here, I’m looking at that because I do feel as though among the bureaus, there’s disparity in the way that that’s accomplished,” Sullivan said. “And I’m looking at the hours that are being worked, the functions that are being performed, because you do need some officers and supervisors with the responsibility of coordinating the community policing program to make sure that everybody’s moving forward in the same direction.”

Shortage of officers

The police chief said there are around 580 sworn officers in the Wichita Police Department. He said that is about 60 short of where the WPD needs to be.

“We’re accepting lateral transfers from other states. We’re looking at producing a recruitment video. We’re casting a much wider net, and we’re looking at all the requirements … to make sure that all of the requirements are really indicative of job performance and that we’re not just relying on past tradition.”

He said his top priority is getting the department up to full strength so response times improve.

“We have to take care of our core functions first, and that is one of the things I was very glad to see in this report that identified some of the problems or some of the challenges that confront me in doing that, including my management prerogatives and I look forward to addressing some of those issues within the contract and working with the FOP to do that.”

Promotions vs favoritism?

Denmark said there is a perception among those surveyed that people are treated differently in the WPD promotions process, in particular when it comes to the oral board assessments.

“There is a perception by some that the oral boards are stacked against people.”

He said the Jensen Hughes’ assessment was not assigned to look into that, but the theme came up so often they thought it was worth mentioning because it has an impact on culture.

“More than a handful of times, people, during the course of our interviews, would say things like, ‘Well, with our efforts for DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), we’re putting unqualified people in positions,'” Denmark said. “I was involved in some of these interviews, and we pushed back and said, ‘What makes you believe that?’ and they couldn’t offer anything substantive to say.”

Instead, he said people complained that there is too much flexibility in the process and that, because there were no set standards to measure that by, the perception could be that people who were given positions didn’t necessarily qualify for them.

The report recommends that the WPD should clarify the process, document it and publish it.

“Then we can hold up any candidate that’s brought up for a position to those standards to ensure that they meet the criteria necessary to perform in that job function,” Denmark said. “That way, again, overall, we can take away some of those feelings of impropriety that may have existed, you know, reality or not, the feeling’s there, so it needs to be addressed.”

Disciplining officers

Denmark also said the issue of inequitable disciplining officers also came up several times in the surveys and interviews. He said that was also beyond the scope of the assessment.

“Whether or not it happened or not, the fact that the theme rose to the top of the pile so often means it’s something that needs to be addressed, whether or not there is actual evidence or not,” he said.

“That at least creates some type of guardrails there, so people feel like when they’re engaged in the process, that they, ‘OK, this is the rule. This is what’s happening,'” he said. “But when it’s too nebulous … when there aren’t any guardrails or type of parameters to this, it just opens yourself up to those types of feelings.”

Are the complaints valid?

Davis said that Jensen Hughes protects all of the people who responded to the surveys and in the interviews. He also would not address any specific complaint against the WPD.

“Let me say this first of all, no matter which agency you go to, there will be some people who will not have something good to say about anything, and there will be some people who have everything good to say about everything at the same time.”

“It’s our job to try to sift through that to find out what is really going on within an agency that we can sustain through evidence and then also provide that support, those recommendations that we fill are necessary to move forward,” he said.

Davis said that if a significant number of people in a department express a certain perception, that perception becomes reality.

“There is a reality in morale, and I think the report has spelled that out,” he said. “To the extent that that’s true, and we believe that it is, then that’s something that needs to be addressed.”

“Whether they agree with those perceptions or not, they exist. They’re real,” Davis said. “People have these concerns. It’s impacting recruiting. It’s impacting the ability of some people who want to even perhaps promote. So those perceptions can become reality.”