Filing a complaint over police racial profiling in Kansas? Don’t expect much

We found that despite the passage of two laws to address the issue, Kansas’ system of tracking racial profiling complaints is ineffective, opaque and deeply flawed — from incomplete data collection to redacted records to agencies simply not participating.

Find out why

How we reported it

To find out how effective the Kansas law is that requires law enforcement agencies to submit reports on racial profiling, we looked at the 2,400 files of annual reports on the Kansas Attorney General’s website.

The Star wrote two computer programs to extract and analyze the information. Of those files, 164 contained 446 actual complaints that came from local law enforcement agencies. Then I created and analyzed a database and followed up with agencies.

To find complaint narratives, The Star filed an open records request in June with the Kansas Attorney General for copies of original handwritten complaints it received over the last several years. After five months, only complaints from 2014 — which had complainant names, contact information and officer names redacted — were received by The Star.