Why were three Overland Park police officers writing false seat belt tickets?

Overland Park Police Chief Frank Donchez says the perplexing case of the faux seat-belt tickets remains a mystery and just plain “weird.”

He’s right about that much.

But before the city moves on from this bizarre episode, it needs to answer a pressing question:

Why did three of its police officers write a series of tickets to motorists for not wearing seat belts when, in fact, the drivers were wearing them? It turns out that the motorists may have committed other traffic violations, such as speeding or running a red light.

Clearly, the officers were giving the drivers a break, but why?

Mayor Carl Gerlach can’t answer that question. Neither can other city officials. And if Donchez knows, he isn’t saying.

“I can’t explain what they did,” he told The Star. “Maybe (they were) cutting somebody a break.”

But the question needs to be answered to ensure that something similar doesn’t happen again. The price the city has paid for this caper has been steep. Three Overland Park police officers have resigned. The city has dismissed more than 200 pending traffic tickets, and more than $4,000 in fines have been refunded.

We do know that the officers started writing the false tickets around May 20 and that their actions were part of a state-funded grant program to crack down on drivers not wearing seat belts.

We also know that all three officers switched off the audio of their dash cameras, possibly to cover up their actions. That’s in violation of department policy.

Donchez was emphatic that the officers did not receive cash bribes from drivers angling to get a moving violation knocked down to a minor seat-belt infraction. The chief said the department interviewed numerous drivers who had been stopped as part of its internal investigation.

“There was no quid pro quo,” he said.

Likewise, he insisted that the officers weren’t working in collaboration with each other and that no patterns emerged after a review of the demographics of stopped drivers. “It was entirely random,” Donchez said. “People were stopped for legitimate violations.”

The police chief deserves credit for his proactive disclosure of this matter to the public and for fielding all manner of questions about what occurred here. Gerlach and council members have expressed confidence that this is an isolated incident and not a sign of systemic problems.

Still, city officials should review these mysterious misdeeds with an eye toward understanding why the officers did what they did. For the moment, a cloud is enveloping the Overland Park Police Department, and it needs to be removed.

This story was originally published July 30, 2018 at 5:30 AM.