Page 10 - IAV Digital Magazine #450

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
New Law: Kansas Cops Can't Have Sex During Traffic Stops
By Dion Lefler
A new Kansas law makes it a crime for police to have sex with people they pull over for traffic violations or detain in criminal investigations.
The new law bans sexual rela- tions "during the course of a traffic stop, a custodial interrogation, an interview in con- nection with an investigation, or while the law enforcement offi- cer has such per- son detained."
Now, you may be asking, wasn't that illegal already? Actually, it wasn't.
Kansas was one of 33 states where consensu- al sex between police and people in their custody wasn't a crime.
That came as a surprise to mem- bers of the House Judiciary Committee, who got the new law passed in a bun- dled bill with sev-
eral other law- enforcement measures. Gov. Jeff Colyer signed it into law Thursday.
Rep. Cindy Holscher, D- Olathe, intro- duced the bill. She said it spun off the case of Lamonte McIntyre, a Kansas City, Kan., man released last year after spending 23 years in prison
for a double mur- der he didn't commit.
The investigation in that case led to multiple affidavits alleging that the detective who made the arrest, Roger Golubski, had a long history of coercing sex from women in Kansas City's black community by threatening to arrest them or their relatives if
they didn't com- ply.
Holscher said she was also moved by a case in New York where a teenager claimed she had been raped by two police officers in the back of their van, but no charges were filed because the officers claimed the sex was con- sensual and therefore legal.
Kansas law previ- ously said "there shouldn't be sex- ual relations between police and persons in jail, but it didn't say anything about if they had been stopped on the streets or were in their cus- tody," Holscher said.
"This helps the person who was detained in their neighborhood or stopped for a ticket, that type of thing," she said.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle embraced the change, say- ing it was long overdue.
"Those of us who have been there for a few years thought it was something that had already been taken care of in the law," said Rep. John Carmichael, D- Wichita, an attor- ney and member of the Judiciary Committee.
He credited Holscher, who
took office last year, for bringing a new perspec- tive that uncov- ered the loop- hole.
"She called me about this. I said, 'You mean it's not against the law?' She said, 'No, it's not,'" Carmichael said. "I checked with the revisor (of statutes) and it was not specifi- cally against the law in Kansas."
Getting away with sex on the job would be a lot harder for police officers now, because most stops are record- ed on body cam- eras, said Rep. John Whitmer, R- Wichita, and also a member of the Judiciary Committee.
But he said it could happen and it's good to have alawinplaceifit does.
"Most officers are great guys and women who are working hard, but there's always the one," he said.
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine