Kansas City police board considers proposal to reform eyewitness identification policies

Members of the board overseeing the Kansas City Police Department on Tuesday discussed creating procedures that would reform the way detectives use eyewitnesses in investigations.

The procedures would require identifications be conducted in a “fair, objective and nonsuggestive manner” when showing witnesses photo arrays and suspects in person shortly after a crime.

Mayor Quinton Lucas, who sits on the board, said the proposed modifications are needed. Information from witnesses cannot be tainted by detectives asking questions “too early,” he said.

“How do we get the witness information without someone kind of pushing or cajoling them into a certain type of answer?” he asked following the board meeting. “That’s what’s important for us and so I think that we’ll be able to lay out a path that does that.”

There is currently nothing in department policy governing eyewitness identification, an officer in the policies and procedures department wrote in a memo to the commissioners. Each unit conducts those procedures differently, he said.

“The current practices are mostly learned from detective to detective,” the officer wrote. “The current practices utilized by the Department can potentially contribute to wrongful eyewitness identifications.”

The proposed policy states that the department recognizes identification procedures must be aimed at “protecting the innocent from misidentification in every way possible,” while also working as a tool for detectives in criminal investigations.

Asked if the proposed procedure would apply to in-person lineups, a police spokesman said that “has yet to be decided.”

“That’s what this discussion phase of the policy development and approval process is all about,” Sgt. Jake Becchina said.

Across the U.S., faulty eyewitness identifications have contributed to about 70% of the more than 360 wrongful convictions reversed by DNA evidence, according to the Innocence Project.

Deputy Chief Mike Wood said the proposed changes use standards set by case law. Eyewitness testimony is not as reliable as viewers of crime television shows might think it is, he said.

“It’s better to have that, ‘Yes it’s him,’ or ‘No, it’s not; I don’t see anybody.’ Anything in the middle just kind of has a tendency to muddle it down the road when it gets to court,” said Wood, who leads the department’s professional development and research division.

The policy changes were tabled until the next board meeting.

If approved, it would require that all eyewitness identifications be recorded whenever possible in their entirety with audio or video. It would also mean if detectives turned off the camera, they would have to say why and alert a supervisor.

It would require detectives to use a minimum of five “fillers” when showing a witness a photo array.

The witness or victim would then be told that the person of interest “may or may not be present” in the images. The witness would then be asked to describe their “level of certainty” about the identification in their own words.

Under the policy, the detective administering the procedure would not be allowed to comment on the identification or lack thereof.

Lucas said changing the department’s procedures would hopefully make sure convictions like that of Kevin Strickland — who Jackson County prosecutors now say is innocent — “never happen again.”

In Strickland’s case, the lone eyewitness to the 1978 triple murder of which he was convicted said she could identify two of the four suspects that night: Kilm Adkins and Vincent Bell. She told detectives she could not identify the other two perpetrators.

But the next day, she identified Strickland, 18, after she described a shotgun-wielding suspect to her sister’s boyfriend, who suggested that suspect might be Strickland. Her testimony was the most damning evidence at Strickland’s 1979 trial.

Years later, the witness recanted her testimony, saying Strickland had been wrongly charged. Relatives have said she was pressured during a lineup into identifying Strickland.

The eyewitness in Strickland’s case was “reporting a belief, formed after the fact and as a result of suggestive input, rather than a genuine memory of having seen or recognized Mr. Strickland at the scene,” concluded Nancy Franklin, an eyewitness expert.

Lucas called it a “travesty” that Strickland, now 62, remains in a Missouri prison.

”I would hope that we find a way that we get the governor, someone, a court to recognize that this man should be free,” he said.