Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple says that a Wichita Police Officer threatened him during a heated exchange during a community clean-up event in September. It began when Whipple turned into a wrong parking lot, and the officer told him loudly and sternly, to turn around and leave.
Whipple says the officer’s body cam footage does not show the officer yelling. It does show the mayor on the phone with City Manager Robert Layton. In the conversation, Whipple asks Layton who the current interim police chief is because he wanted to report the incident and described the officer as "incredibly rude."
Meanwhile, the Fraternal Order of Police, (FOP), issued a statement Thursday saying they are disappointed at how Mayor Whipple conducted himself, and defended the officers’ actions as appropriate, as well as when the body camera was activated.
The FOP release said the officer, who initially didn’t recognize Whipple, was “loud, stern and direct in his verbal commands, and had to be due to the distance the Officer was from the Mayor who was in his vehicle. The Officer initiated the contact because Mayor Whipple made an improper U-turn, going through a closed median and past a patrol vehicle blocking the entrance to the parking lot where they were doing the neighborhood clean-up.
Whipple is now calling for a review of the city’s body camera policies after he says the officer’s body camera failed to document the officer yelling at him.