In the year since George Floyd’s death, Kansas takes little action on police reform

In June 2020, a month after George Floyd died, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly created a Commission on Racial Equity and Justice. It’s first task: to study law enforcement-community relations and make recommendations to improve them.

“As Governor, I am committed to ensuring this latest tragedy does not fade into the next news cycle,” Kelly said. “Communities of color do not have the luxury of time for leaders to address these issues.”

In December, the commission produced a 91-page report with 60 recommendations. It supported more investigative muscle for the state’s law enforcement licensing agency, required more implicit bias training and a review of the process used for assessing complaints of biased policing.

As of Tuesday, when a jury convicted former Minneapolis police office Derek Chauvin on two counts of murder and one count of manslaughter in Floyd’s death, only a handful of those recommendations have been enacted.

Of the ten police reform bills — which often aligned with commission recommendations — that lawmakers introduced this year, only one has become law: a requirement that the state Attorney General coordinate training on missing and murdered indigenous people.

The rest failed to even gain a formal hearing.

Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, a Wichita Democrat, said she was pleased to see commissions formed at the local and state level, but she heard from constituents asking for more.

“It makes me sad when I have to tell them we really didn’t take action this year,”she said. “These commissions are fine but if nothing materializes from them they were a waste of time.”

Policing in Kansas was ripe for reform, activists and advocates believed.

Federal authorities are investigating the 2018 police killing of an Overland Park teen after the city, under court order, revealed that it paid the officer involved $70,000 to resign. Kansas City, Kansas police are facing continued questions over decades-old allegations of abuse. The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas is suing the Wichita Police, alleging that a gang list kept by the department has resulted in racially-biased enforcement.

Kansas police have shot and killed seven men since Chauvin killed Floyd on May 25, 2020, according to a Washington Post database. ACLU data shows Black Kansans represent 5.6% of the state’s population but 19.2% of its arrests.

Faust-Goudeau said the momentum to take action still exists.

“I think it’s in our face right now and I think we have to do something and we will. We have no choice.”

‘We make time for everything else’

In Missouri, lawmakers have devoted nearly all their energy on criminal justice issues to protecting police. There is a proposal pending to make attacks on law enforcement officers a hate crime. Another would criminalize the “doxing” of officers.

The most extensive proposal would create a police “bill of rights” to protect officers during internal misconduct investigations as if they were criminal defendants. That proposal, which passed the Senate earlier this year and a House committee on Tuesday, also includes measures that criminalize the blocking of traffic during protests — a reaction to last summer’s demonstrations.

Another bill would ban the police chokehold and sex with detainees, and require departments to inquire about an officer’s history with other departments in Missouri before hiring them. The proposal has received praise as the most promising statewide police reform since Michael Brown’s death at hands of Ferguson police in 2014. But the version that passed the Senate last month is pared down from the original and tied to the removal of the Kansas City Police Department’s residency requirement.

Among the Kansas bills that saw no action are measures to require new officers to attend diversity trainings; allow individuals to request attorney general’s investigations of police corruption; order the Kansas Bureau of Investigation to keep data on profiling and bias complaints; bar officers from jumping between departments; mandate psychological evaluations, and ban no-knock warrants.

Senate Vice President Rick Wilborn, a McPherson Republican, called the inaction an issue of timing.

The majority of the measures were referred to the House and Senate judiciary committees. Wilborn, the judiciary vice chair, said the panel had an overflowing plate this year as it addressed fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and a constitutional amendment stating that Kansas does not protect the right to an abortion.

“That’s no excuse, that’s just a mere fact,” Wilborn said.

He said he was interested in considering these policies when time allowed next year.

“There’s only one way to do that and that is to have hearings where you hear both sides, hear the whole story rather than just react to a nationwide news story,” Wilborn said. “I’m not saying these aren’t important. I’m just saying my goodness you have to set some priority issues.”

Work doesn’t end with session

But Faust-Goudeau and Kendall Seal, policy director for the ACLU of Kansas, said police reform and systemic racism need to be a higher priority for the state.

“We make time for everything else that we want to do,” Faust-Goudeau said. “It just depends on your priorities. I don’t buy that one anymore. We have to take time to do things that matter.”

Seal said changes in election laws and banning transgender students from girls sports should not have taken priority over police reform. He said the state’s response to COVID-19 — by suspending speedy trial rights — had, in fact, worsened the impacts of systemic racism by creating a situation where people of color may spend longer periods of time behind bars.

“The system will always center the system,” Seal said. “Instead they should be asking what does this mean for the people in the community.”

“We don’t have the political will or leadership to lean in and demand results in this space.”

Tiffany Anderson, the Superintendent of Topeka Schools and co-chair of the commission, said its work on racial equity and justice was a long-term project that could act as an “anchor” to begin the process of dismantling systemic racism. A key component, she said, was learning sessions with Kansans.

“Empowering those that are not heard to speak up, be heard, show ways in which they can create change and be part of it is so, so important,” she said. “They vote the legislators into office. Certainly we want to hold them accountable for ensuring that we live in a state that is better today than it was yesterday.”

The commission is expected to remain in place through at least 2022 and produce two more reports before disbanding.

Anderson said she believed the slower initial movement in the legislature could improve the chances for reform. If lawmakers acted on the recommendations before they were well informed, Anderson said, they may be too quick to reject them.

Another commission member said that despite legislative inaction, the commission’s recommendations were having some impact.

In an email, Shannon Portillo, a co-chair of the Kansas commission, said several local and state agencies had reached out to discuss the recommendations and the state Board of Indigent Services and Law Enforcement Training Center had begun implementing some.

“The recommendations from our Commission are a part of the broader efforts in police reform, and we appreciate that they have been a part of the discussion in a number of Kansas communities,” Portillo, a Douglas County Commissioner said.

“This work does not end with this legislative session.”

Gary Steed, Executive Director of the State’s Commission on Peace Officer Standard and Training said his agency was working to make all documentation of action on officer licenses available online.

In line with the recommendations, Gov. Laura Kelly allocated $4.1 million in funding for the state’s overworked public defender office, Kelly spokeswoman Reeves Oyster said in an email.

“The Governor continues to work closely with the Commission and other stakeholders to find ways to develop and implement recommendations that increase equity and justice in Kansas,” Oyster said.

The Star’s Jeanne Kuang contributed to this report.