Why Kansas’ strict body camera laws mean public may never see KCK police shooting video

Last weekend, the activist organization Justice for Wyandotte held a rally requesting that the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department release body camera footage from the night two weeks ago when an officer shot and killed 25-year-old Amaree’ya Henderson during a traffic stop.

His girlfriend was in the car with him, and his mother was on FaceTime with the couple when the shooting happened. Both said he did not have a weapon and have told The Star about how he was a beloved member of their family who was trying to earn some extra cash delivering Doordash orders that night.

Kansas City, Missouri police are investigating the shooting because of an agreement between the two departments and have not released details about the incident.

While the family has put in a records request to view the video, it may be a while before they are able to see it. And even after that, it may never be released to the public.

That’s because Kansas has one of the strictest laws related to police body camera footage in the country.

What are Kansas’ laws around body camera footage?

To understand the rules around releasing body camera footage, you have to know a bit about how Kansas handles public records, which is all detailed in a law called the Kansas Open Records Act.

According to the law, public agencies in Kansas are not required to disclose anything that is considered a “criminal investigation record.” As of 2016, that includes all footage from police body and vehicle cameras.

This means that law enforcement agencies in Kansas, by law, do not need to release body camera footage to the public, but they can choose to do so at their own discretion.

Anyone can make a records request to ask a police department to release body camera footage, but the department can deny requests based on this law.

In Kansas City, Kansas, you can submit a request through the NextRequest portal.

The KCKPD policy is that the chief can decide to voluntarily release body camera video “if there is a compelling reason, such as an overall benefit to the safety or education of the public.”

Does the law ever require a body camera video to be released?

It says that a district court can order a police department to release body camera footage under certain circumstances. A district judge needs to decide that the video is in the public interest, wouldn’t interfere with ongoing investigations, wouldn’t endanger anyone’s life and that it meets a few other qualifying conditions.

A 2021 court decision opened up the possibility for body camera video footage to be released in the public interest under the open records law, according to Max Kautsch, an attorney in Kansas and the president of the Kansas Coalition for Open Government.

In that case, a district judge ruled in favor of The Wichita Eagle after the paper requested body camera footage from the Wichita Police Department for two incidents related to possible police misconduct.

The district judge said the videos were connected “to the core of public confidence in law enforcement, and thus most definitely in the public’s interest.” He ordered them to be released after the investigations into the incidents were complete.

Kautsch said that even with this decision, the law is still ambiguous enough that it can be interpreted differently in different situations by different judges.

What does the law say about who can request to see a video?

Even if a judge doesn’t order a video to be released, some select people who are most closely connected to an incident captured on a police body camera may request to listen to the audio from or view the video.

Those individuals include:

• The person who is the subject of the recording

• The parent or legal guardian of a person under 18 who is the subject of the recording

• The attorney for the subject of the recording

• The heir at law, an executor or an administrator of a decedent, if the person who is the subject of the recording has died

Police departments are required by the law to let an individual who fits into one of those categories listen to the audio or view the video if they request to, but they can charge a fee.

KCKPD requires individuals to make those requests in writing. Then someone from the department will schedule a time for the person to listen to or view the video in person at City Hall in the company of a police officer, according to the department’s policy.

Granting this kind of request for a select individual to listen to or view the video is not the same as the department publicly releasing the video.

What have families’ experiences been with requesting body cam footage?

Nikki Richardson, president of Justice for Wyandotte, said it’s taken some families years to get access to footage from police body cameras, referencing specifically the families of residents in the metro killed during police shootings such as Tyrea Pryor, killed in Kansas City in 2022, Malcolm Johnson, killed in Kansas City in 2021 or John Albers, killed in Overland Park in 2018.

“There needs to be reform in the open records request act in reference to officer involved shootings, even though families are submitting requests [for footage], they are getting denied,” Richardson said.

What else do we know about Amaree’ya Henderson’s case?

In a statement released during the protest on Saturday, the family said they are “outraged that Amaree’ya’s life was taken through unjustified violence... If there is nothing to hide, release the footage to the public!”

Earlier this week, his family retained a lawyer. They have submitted an open records request and don’t have any more comments on that at this time.

The Kansas City Police Department is investigating the shooting as an outside agency from the Missouri side of the state line, and that investigation is ongoing.

If you want to refresh yourself on what we know about what happened to Henderson, we recapped it here.

The Star’s Mattie Gellman, Natalie Wallington, Anna Spoere and Laura Bauer contributed reporting.