Kansas City Star
via NewsEdge Corporation
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Two years ago, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius signed a law intended to end police stops based solely on skin color.
The law required, among other things, all law enforcement agencies in the state to make yearly reports to the attorney general’s office listing complaints of racial profiling.
Last year, however, only one in three law enforcement agencies in Kansas filed the required reports of racial profiling. That is 147 of 431 agencies, or 34 percent.
By comparison, 97 percent of law enforcement officials in Missouri filed such reports last year -- 635 of 653 agencies.
“We don’t have any enforcement ability” over those agencies that don’t report, said Ashley Anstaett, spokeswoman for Kansas Attorney General Paul Morrison. “There’s no penalty if they don’t report.”
That has been a problem from the beginning, said Sen. David Haley, a Kansas City, Kan., Democrat who was one sponsor of the anti-profiling bill.
“There’s no hammer behind the law. No teeth in it,” he said. “It became the proverbial toothless paper tiger.”
By contrast, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon reported nine agencies to the governor that failed to file an annual traffic stop report last year. And in 2005, the Missouri Department of Public Safety withheld $7,166 from 17 noncomplying agencies that received state funding.
The Kansas law, which was intended to spark community conversations on the threat posed by racial profiling, also called for establishing a 15-member Governor’s Task Force on Racial Profiling. The task force is supposed to quantify the profiling problem and make recommendations to abolish the practice.
But the task force also has had its critics, including one of its co-chairmen. The group, which meets monthly, has struggled this summer to get a quorum to conduct business. It did not have a quorum when it met in Olathe in June.
“Up until this point there’s been a lot of dialogue, but the truth is, people are looking for action,” said the Rev. Allen Smith of Salina, co-chairman of the task force.
“We’re expecting some real results,” said Smith, pastor of St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church in Salina. “I don’t think the issue is going away.”
Another sponsor of the bill, Sen. Donald Betts, a Wichita Democrat, said that because the law didn’t have any teeth to it, the task force was meant to be a crucial part of the law. The goal, he said, was for the task force members to study the issue, come up with a uniform process for collecting the data and make recommendations to the Legislature.
Betts also is frustrated with the task force and says he will call for its members to be replaced if he doesn’t see action before the end of the year.
“It does not take forever and a day to come with recommendations of data collection,” he said. “It’s time to stop talking about it and time to be about it. It’s time to move. ... If the task force doesn’t do something, I intend to hold the task force accountable.”
Members of the Kansas Human Rights Commission assigned to investigate racial profiling complaints — as well as the governor — stand behind the work of the task force and say it is slow but important work.
“It may not seem to a lot of people that we’re doing much, but we’re taking baby steps. And that’s important,” said Danielle Dempsey-Swopes, the governor-appointed task force administrator.
“It’s really slow-going. There is so much distrust — both real and imagined — between the police and the public. You have to overcome the historic and stereotypic bias that everyone brings with them.”
A study released four years ago showed that on some Kansas highways, state troopers are three times more likely to pull over black and Hispanic drivers than white motorists.
In Olathe and Overland Park, police were twice as likely to stop black drivers, the study found.
Results like that and anecdotal information of discrimination have dogged law enforcement officials for years.
“A lot of law officers just really want to know what the rules are,” said Police Chief Janet Thiessen of Olathe. “Having a standardized data collection tool is a big part of what’s needed. That’s the linchpin to make this work.”
Doyle King, executive director of the Kansas Association of Chiefs of Police, said that despite newsletter postings and e-mail notices, many departments have wrongly assumed that if they had no racial profiling complaints there was no need to file a yearly report.
Officials in Morrison’s office realized that might be an issue with some agencies. So in July, the office sent e-mail letters to police and sheriff’s departments reminding them they need to send in reports. The attorney general’s office also plans to simplify the reporting forms for agencies.
The state task force is prepared to hire a $50,000- to $70,000-a-year full-time coordinator to further that awareness and conduct statewide police training. In March, the task force and the Kansas Department of Transportation received a federal grant of $643,613 to combat racial profiling.
“But there’s much we need to do” before Kansas has the same traffic-stop database Missouri has collected, Dempsey-Swopes said.
“That’s where we’re headed, but it’s a long way and a lot of money off. I would say it’s three years and $10 million off.”
Task force member Clyde Howard, director of affirmative action at Kansas State University in Manhattan, said that he is satisfied with the progress of the task force but that more work lies ahead.
“My gut tells me racial profiling does occur. The frequency? We don’t yet have credible data to make that judgment. I have personal stories. My friends have personal stories about being stopped,” Howard said. “It goes on.”
Sebelius said she is satisfied with the pace of progress to build relationships between the public and police. The task force has until 2009 to complete its work.
“There’s a real need for trust between law enforcement officers and the residents they’re protecting,” Sebelius said. “The task force is helping to enhance that trust.”
Copyright 2007 Kansas City Star