Accountable to no one: Kentucky State Police need new rules on cameras, investigations
The Kentucky State Police has long been an island unto itself; created in statute to be untouchable, they remain out of touch to mere mortals, including the ink-stained wretches who file numerous open records requests for information about them and the investigations they undertake.
But thanks to R.G. Dunlop of the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting and the Marshall Project, which has published a series of stories about police shootings in rural areas, we now know much more about Kentucky’s top law enforcement agency. Three truly remarkable facts stand out in particular:
1. Kentucky State Police have committed more fatal shootings than any other law enforcement agency in the state, including Lexington and Louisville.
2. They’ve killed more people in rural communities than any other department in the country.
3. At a time when police, at least police in urban areas, are being held to account like never before, Kentucky State Police have never adopted the now widely-used policy that require them to wear body-worn cameras. They are considering it, they told Dunlop. But without the video that finally convinced the world that police brutality was an actual problem in urban centers, troopers and witnesses have disagreed about what really happened in these rural cases.
The Kentucky State Police investigate themselves in the occurrence of an officer-involved shooting, so it’s hardly surprising that of the 41 deaths examined by Dunlop and his partners, no Kentucky trooper was ever prosecuted. Dunlop had to build his own database of shootings because the State Police either do not keep them or will not release them
This state of affairs goes all the way back to 1984 when the Kentucky Supreme Court upheld in Hughes v. Welch that state law gives the trial board of the Bureau of State Police “exclusive jurisdiction of discipline and removal of officers of the bureau.”
It’s doubtful that a law and order Republican supermajority would take on the still powerful State Police by introducing legislation to require body-worn cameras.
But what’s absurd is that the agency would not recognize on its own that the time has come to adopt what nearly everyone considers the gold standard in accountability. In this post-George Floyd and Breonna Taylor time, police departments are in trouble all over the country. Kentucky State Police have had a particularly bad year, what with some Manual High School students finding Nazi language in training materials.
Other cases, other problems
But the other big problem is that the lack of transparency and accountability at the Kentucky State Police affects other departments as well because when requested, KSP investigates officer-involved shootings in local departments, including Lexington and Louisville.
Sometimes they release information about these cases. Mostly, they don’t. Their disdain for the state’s open records law then aids and abets a lack of transparency on the part of local law enforcement.
Cases in point are two officer-involved shootings in Lexington. On July 28, a Lexington police officer shot a man on Thirlstane Court while attempting to serve a murder warrant on him. The shooting occurred on a Wednesday when the Lexington Police Department attempted to assist the U.S. Marshals Service in serving the warrant on a 31-year-old man at a home in the 1600 block of Thirlstane Court, according to Lexington police. The officer was wearing a camera, police confirmed, but have not released the footage despite numerous requests. The Herald-Leader identified the suspect through court documents.
The second case happened a year before, and we at least know the names. Lexington police officer Miller Owens shot Darion Worfolk on July 31, 2020. Worfolk was allegedly carrying a gun and fled Owens before Owens shot him. But State Police have continued to refuse to release any footage from that event.
State Police Trooper Matt Sudduth has told the Herald-Leader that the refusals are in accordance with the “standard operating procedure.”
Except that such procedures are not in fact exemptions from the state open records act, according to former Assistant Attorney General Amye Bensenhaver, co-founder of the Open Government Coalition.
“’Standard Operating Procedures’ are not statutory exceptions authorizing nondisclosure of public records,” Bensenhaver said. “This response violates KRS 61.880(1), requiring citation to one or more exception(s) and an explanation of how the exception(s) apply to the records withheld.
The police might have a point if they keep records secret because they are “preliminary,” or part of an ongoing investigation.
But it all just depends, and we don’t know on what. State police have previously released the names of officers and victims in officer-involved shootings before their investigation is complete. Officials identified Lexington police officer Franklin Epley and Ryan D. Jones less than one week after Epley shot Jones on May 1 this year. Jones allegedly fired a gun at Epley before Epley returned fire and shot him.
Lexington Police Department Spokesman Donnell Gordon said that sometimes an investigation will bleed into a court case, where prosecutors decide that documents or video footage might damage a trial’s outcome. But investigations by the police should end before the court phase starts, and it’s in that window that Kentucky State Police should be accountable.
Those who vow to protect and serve should be more interested in telling the public about their faults and those of other police departments. The thin blue line of silence serves no one, particularly not police themselves. It’s time for them to do better and develop a “standard operating procedure” on transparency and accountability. Being accountable to no one serves no one well.
This story was originally published August 26, 2021 at 11:10 AM.