The Washington Post – by RADLEY BALKO
A pretty awful new bill (PDF) in the Kansas legislature would require anyone filing a complaint against a police officer to swear an affidavit before the complaint will be investigated. If any portion of the complaint is later shown to be false, the complainant could then be prosecuted for perjury.
That’s bad enough. But the bill also has a couple other troubling provisions. First, it lets officers who are the subject of complaints avoid answering questions until they’re given the complaint with all documenting evidence in its entirety. No respectable police detective would conduct an investigation this way. Any police interrogator will tell you that you never let a suspect know everything you know about the allegations against him. A good cop will have a true story that exonerates him, regardless of what’s stated in the complaint or how the complaint is revealed to him. A bad cop who is given the entire complaint can construct a narrative informed by everything the investigators know, safe in the knowledge that there is no additional information that could later contradict him.
Second, the bill would prohibit any police agency from investigating a complaint against an officer if another police agency has already found the complaint to be without merit. In practical terms, that means a sheriff’s department or the state police couldn’t investigate the possibility that a city or town police department was covering up misconduct. It doesn’t happen often, but on a few occasions that sort of investigation has exposed corruption and patterns of misconduct. (This case from Kansas City is instructive, though it occurred on the Missouri side of the border.) Once an officer’s own police agency clears him of wrongdoing, he’s home free.
So you’re welcome to file a complaint. But the cop you’re complaining about will be investigated by his colleagues — and only his colleagues. If they find that he did nothing wrong, as they nearly always do, you could then be arrested for a felony.
I’m sure that people file false complaints against police officers quite often. This bill will almost certainly discourage that. But it will also almost certainly prevent legitimate victims of police abuse from coming forward, too.
The Kansas legislature’s Web site is unclear as to who is sponsoring the bill.
I was in Kansas City a few weeks ago. I met with several people from Kansas who claimed to be the victims of police abuse and misconduct. Some of the allegations were pretty serious, and many of them were already afraid to come forward, fearing retaliation. Maybe some of them were lying, or exaggerating. I doubt all of them were. And I doubt this bill will make it any easier for those who were telling the truth to come forward.
Oddly, this bill comes as the same legislature is considering a reform bill. As I reported a few weeks ago, the Kansas legislature is also considering a bill that would allow more access to search warrant affidavits. That proposed law is the result of a botched police raid on former CIA employees Robert and Adlynn Harte. In Kansas, search warrant affidavits are presumptively sealed. You have to get a judge to release them even if you were the subject of the search.
That can get expensive if the police agency in question doesn’t want you to have those documents. The Hartes have spent around $25,000 trying to get the police to release the documents related to their case And now that we know, it’s easy to see why the police wanted to keep those documents secret. The raid on the Hartes’ home was based on a state police officer spotting Robert Harte with his kids at a hydroponic store (he was buying supplies to start a tomato and squash garden with his son) and a search of the family’s trash which turned up “marijuana seeds and stems” that turned out to be Adlynn Harte’s looseleaf tea.
As I pointed out in my previous post, the bill the Hartes are backing is really a pretty minor reform that would only put Kansas in line with most of the rest of the country. Yet it is aggressively opposed by Kansas prosecutors. (Unfortunately, it is also opposed by the state’s defense attorneys.)
Last week, the Kansas Senate judiciary committee held a hearing on the bill. That hearing was . . . odd. The Hartes have a compelling and infuriating story about what happened to them. But they couldn’t really tell it. They were limited to just three minutes of testimony. There was also an odd clash between the bill’s sponsor and the chairman of the committee.
The good news is that the bill the Hartes are backing has already passed the Kansas House by a wide margin. The bad news is that state Senate may water it down. And that the same legislature is considering a separate bill that would put yet another barrier to holding bad cops accountable.
More power given to the police state. Absolutely ridiculous.
Yet a cop can falsify a police report and nothing will happen to him, just like a district attourny can lie and streatch the truth in the courtroom to get a conviction. 🙁 🙁
Man I know their noses grew mighty long in the court rooms when I had to go to court. Yea, they lied through their teeth about what I was arrested for and I was even found guilty at that. 🙁
I have no idea from where the idea for House Bill 2698 truly originated, how members of the Kansas House Standing Committee on Corrections and Juvenile Justice voted for or against the bill, their reasoning for supporting the bill, or what kind of majority it takes for a bill to make it out of a Kansas House committee, but I do find it interesting to look at the backgrounds of the members of this particular committee that proposed this piece of legislation:
Chair – John Rubin, BAR attorney and arbitrator for Financial Industry Regulatory Authority; former JAG Corps prosecutor, advisor on contracts and procurement for US Army Corps of Engineers, litigator for Federal Labor Relations Authority, counsel defending prison employees for Federal Bureau of Prisons, litigator for FDIC on loans and TARPs, Social Security disability judge.
Vice Chair – Ramon Gonzalez, Police Chief, special investigator, member of FBI-Law Enforcement Executive Development Association; former director of Risk Management Services for AT&T; USMC, discharged.
Ranking Minority Member – Janice Pauls, BAR attorney, member of Kansas Sentencing Commission.
Member – Steven Anthimides, jeweler, owner of Century Plaza office building in Wichita, board member of Wichita Downtown Development Corporation.
Member – Steven R. Becker, BAR attorney, retired district court judge.
Member – Rob Bruchman, BAR business attorney, owner of Bruchman Law Firm; former US attorney clerk and legislative clerk.
Member – Larry Campbell, banker, professor of business and ethics, real estate and investment manager; former city councilman and mayor.
Member – Blaine Finch, BAR attorney, president of Green, Finch & Covington law firm, professor; formerly a legislative aide, city commissioner and mayor.
Member – Gail Finney, small business owner, formerly a marketing consultant.
Member – Brett Hildabrand, website designer; formerly a freight broker; stated he opposed this bill, and that it was introduced by Melanie Meier.
Member – Russell Jennings, city council member; formerly a government consultant and corrections officer for Kansas Juvenile Justice Authority; sheriff’s department; Juvenile Justice Authority commissioner; board member of Tower Foundation, Criminal Justice Advisory Board, Kansas Substance Abuse Policy Board, Kansas Sex Offender Policy Board, Leadership Kansas Board of Trustees, Chamber of Commerce, Kansas Advisory Group on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Kansas Supreme Court Juvenile Intake and Assessment Advisory Committee, Kansas Corrections Association, Criminal Justice Advisory Board, Kansas Committee Assignments, Kansas District Magistrate Judges Association, Kansas Corrections Ombudsman Board, Kansas Peace Officers Association; district magistrate,
Member – Melanie Meier, Department of Defense civilian contractor, senior military analyst, Systems Studies and Simulations Incorporated; inspector general, lieutenant colonel, US Army Reserve; formerly a security specialist for Special Operations Command in Korea, US Army Corps of Engineers and Navy, Middle East and Africa engineer contracting.
Member – Tom Moxley, owner of Moxley Management Company and Moxley Ranch, founder of Ranchland Trust of Kansas (a trust holding legal contracts limiting land uses), founder of Tall Grass Legacy Alliance; formerly a Farm Bureau president and field artillery officer US Army.
Staff:
Robert Allison-Gallimore, BAR attorney, principal analyst of Kansas Legislative Research Department; former Kansas assistant attorney general, court of appeals research attorney.
Dezeree Hodish, fellow at Kansas Legislative Research Department; former graduate research assistant at Foreign Military Studies office, press section intern at US embassy in Moscow, Boren fellow at Institute of International Education on immigrant labor and civil society, University of Kansas foreign language and area studies fellow on economic and business development in Russian federation, government services intern on public school employees’ retirement system, language editor at Resource and Analysis Center on Ukraine language translation, volunteer for Windows on America Center.
Linda Kentch, committee assistant, realty business vice president, title services closer.
Natalie Scott, assistant revisor of statutes.
Jason Thompson, BAR attorney, senior assistant revisor of statutes.