OP officers resign over false seat belt tickets. $4,000 has been refunded to motorists

Three Overland Park police officers have resigned and more than 200 pending traffic tickets have been dismissed after an internal investigation into false seat belt citations.

Police Chief Frank Donchez Jr. said Wednesday that personnel within the department became aware that some officers were ticketing motorists for not wearing seat belts. In fact, they had been wearing them but had committed a different traffic violation.

Instead of a speeding ticket, he said as an example, a motorist would be falsely cited for not buckling up. He said he did not know the motivation behind the officers’ actions.

“I can’t explain what they did,” he said. “Maybe (they were) cutting someone a break.”

The actions coincided with a grant program by the Kansas Department of Transportation that gave police departments funding to provide overtime pay for patrol officers doing extra enforcement on seatbelts, Donchez said. But there is no incentive to any officers to write more seat belt violation tickets, he said.

The officers, who are not believed to have been collaborating with each other, did take measures, including turning off the audio of their dash cameras, possibly to hide their actions.

“That is very troubling,” Donchez said in a press conference Wednesday evening. Dash cam audio is supposed to “remain on at all times.”

Not all of the 200 citations were false, he said, but all of the seat belt tickets by those officers have been dismissed. Some $4,000 has been refunded to motorists who already paid on tickets, he said.

The department became aware of the concerns in mid-June, he said, and conducted an internal investigation. They believe the actions were taken only by the officers who resigned. “We believe this is an isolated incident,” he said.

Donchez said that the department believes that all of the officers involved have resigned. Information was forwarded to the Johnson County District Attorney’s Office, Donchez said, but he does not expect there will be any criminal charges.

This story was originally published July 25, 2018 at 5:18 PM.