The Kansas Statehouse in Topeka.

State lawmakers are considering a bill that would make it more difficult for the public to check the credentials and work history of police officers.

The leader of the state’s largest media association said the law would make it more difficult for the public to know when a police officer has left a job because of misconduct.

“What you are doing is allowing potential law enforcement misconduct to be covered up,” said Doug Anstaett, executive director of the Kansas Press Association, which has testified against HB 2070 that was introduced in mid-January.

If approved, the bill would prohibit the public from having access to the central repository maintained by the Kansas Commission on Peace Officers’ Standards and Training. That organization is the one that determines whether individuals hold the proper licenses to serve as law enforcement professionals in the state. Currently, the public has some access to those files, but the law that is being heard by the House Judiciary Committee would make KS-CPOST’s central registry “available only to those agencies who appoint or elect police or law enforcement officers.”

The proposed law comes up at the same time that Lawrence is learning more about a 2015 case where the Lawrence Police Department arrested one of its own officers after receiving evidence that he beat a fellow female officer, strangled her to the point of unconsciousness and locked her in a dog kennel as part of a sexual encounter.

As the Journal-World reported on Sunday, although the Lawrence Police Department believed it had enough evidence to arrest Officer William Burke, it ultimately did not fire Burke, but rather let him resign. The Douglas County District Attorney also did not charge Burke, despite the police department claiming to have text messages where Burke allegedly admitted to beating the female officer. Burke, who is suing the city for defamation, wrongful search and other allegations, remains licensed to work as a law enforcement officer in the state.

KS-CPOST is the agency that determines whether Burke keeps his license to practice as a law enforcement officer in Kansas. Current law already allows KS-CPOST to redact certain personnel information about an officer before releasing documents to the public. The proposed law, though, would restrict release even further.

“They’ve got the lid on it pretty much already, but now they’re trying to weld the lid down onto the can so nobody can get to it,” Anstaett said.

Among the changes, the bill would seal off reports written by department heads when law enforcement officers are fired.

Restricting the public’s access to this information would make it impossible for the public to check an officer’s background, Anstaett said.

“Our concern is simply about the checks and balances that the public has to have on all government employees. And law enforcement shouldn’t be exempt from that,” he said. “They should be scrutinized just as closely as anybody else because of the huge power that they have.”

Essentially, if the reason why a police officer lost his or her job remains obscured, any potential issues with that officer might be passed on to the next community that hires them, Anstaett said.

“You just sent the problem down the road,” he said.

In written testimony to the Legislature, Anstaett said though registry information would ideally be shared with communities seeking to hire officers, “we are often amazed by how little of this information is sought, or shared, between elected officials who make these important decisions.”

Kirk Thompson, director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, wrote testimony to the House committee in support of the bill, stating the legislation is not “intended to broadly exempt these records from disclosure,” but rather to direct information requests back to the “agency of record” rather than KS-CPOST.

In Burke’s case, this would mean that anyone seeking more information would have to make a request to the City of Lawrence rather than to KS-CPOST.

The problem there, Anstaett said, is that agencies of record, like the Lawrence Police Department, may decline those types of information requests because they are not required to release personnel information.

With the proposed exemption to KS-CPOST and the existing personnel record exemption in the local agencies, information about current and former law enforcement officers would be closed off so “nobody could ever get it,” Anstaett said.