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Wichita Police: Progress Being Made On Body Camera, Use-Of-Force Policies

City of Wichita Youtube

The Wichita Police Department gave an update Thursday on its efforts to implement the recommendations laid out in an extensive assessment released last year. A major focus for the department has been improving the relationship with the community.

Wichita State University's Hugo Wall School of Public Affairs released the 227-page organizational assessment last February. It outlines more than 50 recommendations regarding issues like use of force, mental health training, community policing and use of body cameras.

Speaking at the mayor’s weekly briefing, Ramsay said his department is making progress toward hitting those improvement goals: All 425 officers on patrol now wear body cameras, and nearly all of the department has completed Mental Health First Aid training.

Ramsay says his top priority is to build a use-of-force policy based on national best practices.

“Police work right now is under a microscope," he says. "We want to make sure policies reflect the values of our community and city leadership. Some of our policies are a little bit old and outdated, and these policies will be updated to reflect the direction that our community and that our city leadership wants to go."

New use-of-force policies should be announced this fall. More updates and the full report are available here.

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Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.