Ex-Wichita police secretary sentenced for leaking classified investigation details

Amy Renee Leiker
·2 min read
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A former Wichita police secretary who gave classified information to a relative has been placed on probation for 18 months after she failed to adhere to the conditions of a yearlong diversion agreement that could have resulted in the dismissal of the case.

Mia Turner, 51, pleaded guilty in April to one count of committing a computer crime after a detective listening in on jail phone calls last year discovered the longtime police employee had given details about an active investigation to the ex-wife of an inmate. Turner is related to the woman through marriage.

The leaked information included a photo of a confidential police email that discussed what led to the inmate’s arrest. She also was accused of accessing and watching video crime evidence related to the inmate’s case — although she claimed she did so solely out of concern that the inmate might “use her name to help him,” according to a probable cause affidavit previously released in the case.

Turner had access to the classified email and other case information working as secretary to top officials in the Wichita Police Department, which employed her for more than 14 years. She left the department last May.

Turner originally sought to resolve the case through a diversion agreement, which she entered into with the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office in June 2022. But prosecutors successfully petitioned the court to revoke her diversion after she was arrested three months later for intoxicated driving and making an unsafe lane change on Kellogg, near downtown. She was placed on diversion in that case in December.

The computer crime count is a felony.

Judge Chrystal Krier, who was appointed to the bench by Gov. Laura Kelly after Judge Kevin O’Connor’s retirement, sentenced Turner in the information leak case on Friday, Sedgwick County District Court records show. Turner’s probation carries an underlying prison term of eight months, said Dan Dillon, a spokesman for the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office. She could be ordered to serve that time if she fails to follow the conditions of her probation.