Wichita to hire firm that consulted after Breonna Taylor, George Floyd police killings

Wichita plans to hire one of the nation’s top law enforcement consulting firms to help reform its police force after a series of incidents city officials say have eroded trust in City Hall.

Jensen Hughes, formerly Hillard Heintze, has been selected as the best of nine bidders for a cultural assessment of the Wichita Police Department. A contract with the Chicago-based consulting firm will go to the City Council for approval Tuesday.

The firm — which Mayor Brandon Whipple described as a “dream team of law enforcement officials, academics and legal minds” — has a history of issuing sobering reports on police departments in the wake of controversy and recommending sweeping changes to police oversight, transparency and accountability.

City Hall requested the assessment of its police department after an Eagle investigation showed the department initially gave little punishment to members of the SWAT team who sent each other text messages that contained racist, sexist and homophobic remarks and made light of killing people. The scope of the assessment was broadened after interim Chief Lem Moore promoted an officer who is being sued for killing an unarmed civilian.

Whipple said the report on Wichita would be completed sometime next year and serve as a “road map” for a new police chief. The estimated cost is $214,000.

“I want to be honest about our problems,” Whipple said. “We can’t fix a problem we don’t know is there, so the more problems we find, the more we can fix.”

Jensen’s assessment and report will investigate the breadth and depth of bias within the Wichita Police Department, focusing on racism, officer discipline, public oversight and violent interactions with civilians, according to the city’s request for proposals. The report will also update best practices for internal investigations and promotions.

Jensen will report monthly updates directly to City Council members, Whipple said.

It will also weigh in on a disconnect between police leadership, city law, human resources, the city manager’s office and elected officials. The city manager’s office was added to the proposal after former Chief Gordon Ramsay, now running for sheriff in Minnesota, sent a letter to council members expressing concerns about interference in disciplinary decisions by the human resources director and inaction by City Manager Robert Layton. They have disputed Ramsay’s claims.

Jensen will also determine whether the Fraternal Order of Police has undue influence on officer discipline.

“If approved, they will first start with gathering community input, conduct a statistical analysis of data, review policies and procedures and providing actionable recommendations with identifiable and measurable outcomes,” Whipple said.

About the firm

The consultants have completed reports on beleaguered police departments in Baltimore, San Francisco, Oakland, Denver and Miami — sometimes on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice. Its most recent reports on Louisville and Minneapolis came in response to the killing by police in 2020 of two unarmed Black people: Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.

The Louisville report was highly critical of racial bias within the ranks of the Metro Police Department and called for additional oversight and a top-to-bottom overhaul of the department as part of a $12 million settlement with the family of Taylor, a 26-year-old bystander shot and killed by Louisville officers as they served a no-knock warrant.

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, whose city created a civilian review board and office of inspector general for additional oversight, said Wichita should expect an honest assessment with concrete recommendations for reform.

“When you have an incident like that take place in your city, it erodes the trust between the police and the community,” he said.

Fischer said the City Council would be wise to approve the contract on Tuesday.

“It’s a strong thing,” he said. “The danger is if you do something like this and just leave it on the shelf. Then it’s a waste of money, and that’s a real shame.”

Fischer said, like Louisville, Wichita should plan to track its progress toward recommendations on a website or publicly available quarterly report.

Why Wichita?

In Wichita, the City Council issued an request for proposals for a cultural assessment of the police department after the Eagle investigation into SWAT members who sent inappropriate text messages.

Those involved received little discipline. The department also did not report the troubling information to federal and state prosecutors, as is required under federal law to ensure defendants get a fair trial.

One photo shared within the department was a graphic and sexually degrading image that mocked the police killing of Floyd. The photo was shared among the Wichita SWAT team while its officers were working crowd control at Floyd-inspired protests in the summer of 2020. Moore said the officers shared the text to “lighten the mood.”

Police leadership didn’t discipline 11 officers involved in the initial investigation, which started in 2021. The only one who received a suspension was an officer who called former chief Ramsay a tool.

Last month, Moore and Layton announced that three of the officers would be suspended for 15 days, including two officers who shared the Floyd meme: Jaime Crouch and Donielle Watson. Chad Spain was suspended after voicing support for the Three Percenters anti-government militia group; city officials said Spain disavowed the group after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Floyd’s killing sparked protests around the world after a teenage bystander released a cell video of a Minneapolis officer pinning Floyd to the street while pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds.

Before the video’s release, Minneapolis police’s media relations division downplayed the department’s role in Floyd’s death and in a news release blamed Floyd’s death on a “medical incident during police interaction.”

An “after-action” review by Jensen in 2021 pinpointed that news release as one of the major causes of mistrust in the Minneapolis police department, which “had an influential role in the protest and unrest.”

Similar instances of police obscuring information until it is released by an outside source have led to questions of trust in Wichita.

The department omitted relevant facts about the text messaging case in packets given to the Citizens Review Board, which is supposed to review police disciplinary decisions, and did not report the messages to prosecutors for nearly a year. The police’s media relations team and interim chief refused to answer questions or talk about the text messages, which were leaked to The Eagle, for two weeks, waiting until after an initial story was published. In response, the City Council gave additional authority to the Citizen Review Board, allowing it to release a written report on the text messages without naming officers.

The city has not released the names of any of the officers involved, but many have been identified by The Eagle.

Another source of contention at City Hall surrounds Moore’s decision to promote Justin Rapp, the officer who killed 28-year-old Andrew Finch in 2017. Moore reportedly told elected officials and the city manager that there was nothing in Rapp’s personnel file that could deny him a promotion.

Weeks after Rapp was promoted, a leaked document surfaced that showed Rapp had been denied a promotion previously because he said he planned to tell Finch’s family to “get over it” if he ever saw them in public.

Finch’s death is one of at least two police killings that have led to ongoing civil lawsuits; the other is a state lawsuit in the death of Icarus Randolph. Wichita recently settled two suits for more than $1 million after fighting the families of Marquez Smart and Troy Lanning in court for nearly a decade.