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8 @CN: CHAPTER TWO Genesis: Director Lou Richter and the KBI’s First Team The Kansas Bureau of Investigation had a somewhat shaky start. Kansas Attorney General Jay Parker, later given much credit for the agency’s inception, was initially a reluctant KBI sponsor. He would eventually become its most ardent supporter. Parker would also later become a justice and then chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court. The fact that he had presided over the creation of the KBI would not impede his political progress. The credit for the creation of the KBI belongs primarily to the Kansas Bankers’ Association, the Kansas Livestock Association, and, in particular, the Kansas State Peace Officers’ Association, today known as the Kansas Peace Officers’ Association, which was the first group to lobby the state legislature for a state bureau and also the most persistent. In an impressive seven-page brochure, “How to Solve the Crime Problem,” distributed to the legislature and throughout the state in 1931, the Kansas State Peace Officers’ Association’s legislative committee attempted to save the Kansas governor, attorney general, and state legislators considerable time and effort by writing for them proposed legislation entitled “An Act Relating to the Investigation, Detection, Apprehension, Identification and Prosecution of Criminals, and Making an Appropriation Therefor.” The proposed act began with the words “A Department of the State Government under the Attorney General is hereby created and established, and is designated as The State Department of Criminal Identification and Investigation .” The act provided that the new department would have a director , an assistant director, and an unspecified number of investigators. The director would serve at the pleasure of the attorney general and would be appointed by the attorney general, “with the advice, consent and approval of a Council of three Advisors selected by the Kansas State Peace Officers’ Association .”1 The director would have a minimum of five years’ experience in law enforcement and would be appointed “without regard to political affiliation , but solely because of his practical experience in law enforcement and knowledge of the science of fingerprint identification.”2 The proposed legislation, which would take effect July 1, 1931, contained twenty sections. Among the more interesting provisions was Section 8: Genesis 9 The Department shall co-operate with the respective Sheriffs, County Attorneys, Police Officers and all other law enforcement officers in the state in the investigation, detection, apprehension, identification and prosecution of criminals and shall maintain and index in standard manner all information relating to stolen property and shall, on the direction of the Attorney General, conduct such investigations and render such assistance as may be necessary to secure evidence essential to the conviction of alleged violators of the criminal laws of the state.3 The brochure was signed by the chairman of the Kansas State Peace Officers’ Association’s legislative committee, Coffey County Attorney Joe Rolston Jr., Burlington, Kansas, and the five members of his committee, including the undersheriff of Marion County, Kansas, L. P. Richter. The brochure didn’t create the KBI, however. The idea, in 1931, instead fell on deaf ears. Nor would the agency that was eventually created eight years later exactly resemble the one advocated in the brochure, in name or organization. Even the proposal for the director’s salary, $3,600, was changed to $3,000 when the KBI began—so much for inflation. But overall, the brochure’s proposal was, at the least, a harbinger of things to come. Over the next several years, the lobbying efforts by the Kansas Bankers’ Association, the Kansas Livestock Association, and the Kansas State Peace Officers’ Association to persuade the Kansas legislature to create the Kansas Bureau of Investigation continued and then intensified in 1938. A committee formed of bankers, ranchers, insurance people, sheriffs, and police chiefs visited Governor Payne Ratner in Topeka and pleaded with him to use his influence with the legislature and Attorney General Jay Parker to form a small, highly specialized group of investigators that could help combat the wave of armed robbery, homicide, cattle rustling, and theft ravaging Kansas. All agreed they did not want a state police force. What they did want was a small group of investigators, something like the Texas Rangers or a small FBI, which could respond to requests for assistance from local police and local sheriffs, and which could transcend state lines, if required, to assist local Kansas law enforcement and to cooperate with other states’ law enforcement authorities. Governor Ratner agreed and turned to Representative Alfred H...

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