Former Wichita police captain who leaked records to Walmart guard gets diversion

Wendell Nicholson has been granted diversion after leaking confidential police records to a Walmart security guard while he was a captain in the Wichita Police Department.

Nicholson, a 29-year veteran who retired one day before he was charged with eight felony computer crimes in March, signed the diversion agreement May 23, court records show.

Nicholson admitted he is guilty of all charges, and the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office agreed to drop the case as long as he stays out of trouble for one year and abides by the terms of the diversion agreement.

Those terms include reporting to the diversion office by mail or in person once a month; maintaining a functioning telephone number with voicemail; attending school or work full-time, unless exempted; not violating the law; notifying the diversion office whenever he has contact with a law enforcement official; and receiving permission before leaving the state of Kansas.

The court order notifies Nicholson he is receiving diversion “after investigation of the offenses, and your background, and considering the factors contained (in state law for diversion) . . . the interest of justice will be served” by granting diversion.

Nicholson, 52, had no prior convictions. District Attorney Marc Bennett previously told The Eagle that the leaks did not compromise any criminal investigations.

Nicholson must pay $160 to the District Attorney’s Office, $195 in court costs and a $33 jail processing fee. Nicholson was not arrested and instead appeared in court on a summons. But he had to go through a booking process last month, where he provided information to Sedgwick County Jail without having to spend any time in a cell.

His lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

The leaked records included body camera video of a police shooting, details about an internal investigation into text messages sent by SWAT team members and gang list information. Other records included DEA bulletins, shooting reviews, victim and suspect identities, information about gang feuds and murder suspects, and an image of homicide victims.

Those records are typically withheld by the city or barred from disclosure by state law.

The city refuses to disclose who is on its secretive gang list. Even people placed on the list are not allowed to know they’re on it. The city is being sued in federal court on claims that the approximately 3,000-member list is frequently abused and unfairly and arbitrarily targets African-American and Hispanic residents for heightened police scrutiny, higher bail and enhanced sentences.

Nicholson was a captain who oversaw the traffic division and the Patrol South police station. He also served as the department’s liaison to the Wichita Citizens Review Board, a civilian oversight group that reviews officer discipline decisions and Professional Standards Bureau investigations, from the summer of 2020 to April 2022.

Nicholson — the highest ranking Black man in the Wichita Police Department when he retired — handled the CRB’s review of the department’s mishandling of discipline for officers who sent racist, sexist and homophobic text messages, including some that celebrated police brutality. The board issued a scathing report on the department’s handling of the case, and the city responded by disciplining some of the officers and hiring Jensen Hughes to investigate the culture inside the department.

Two weeks after an Eagle investigation uncovered the troubling text messages and subsequent failure to discipline the SWAT team members involved, interim Chief Lem Moore pulled Nicholson from his role.

Nicholson is one of ten defendants being sued by Deputy Chief Jose Salcido and former deputy chiefs Chet Pinkston and Wanda Givens, who made up former Chief Gordon Ramsay’s executive team.

The deputy chiefs claimed in a late-February federal court filing that “Nicholson is believed to have released confidential information about criminal cases in violation of the law and city policy” and took part in a conspiracy to discredit and remove the deputy chiefs from their positions. Givens and Pinkston left the department voluntarily, and Salcido remains the deputy chief of investigations.

Nicholson, whose legal representation in the federal lawsuit is being paid for by the city, is seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed in part because he was not their supervisor and was not in a position retaliate against them.