Kansas governor signs bill banning police officers from having sex during traffic stops

Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer (R) signed a new bill into law on Thursday that bans police officers from having sex with people they pull over for traffic violations.

Sexual relations are now outlawed for police “during the course of a traffic stop, a custodial interrogation, an interview in connection with an investigation, or while the law enforcement officer has such person detained,” The Kansas City Star reported Thursday.

Before the measure, Kansas was one of 33 states where consensual sex between police and an individual they detained was not a crime, according to the Star.

{mosads}New York passed a similar bill last month, closing a loophole in the state law by specifiying that people in police custody are unable to consent to sex. 

Kansas law previously banned sexual relations between officers and people in jail. However, it didn’t state anything about people stopped on the street or in their custody outside of the jail, Kansas Rep. Cindy Holscher (D) said. 

Holscher introduced the bill after an investigation found that a Kansas City, Kan., detective coerced women to have sex with him by threatening to arrest them or their family.

“This helps the person who was detained in their neighborhood or stopped for a ticket, that type of thing,” she told the Star.

The newspaper reported that several members of the Kansas House Judiciary Committee were surprised this wasn’t already against the law. 

“Those of us who have been there for a few years thought it was something that had already been taken care of in the law,” state Rep. John Carmichael (D) told the Star.

The committee pushed to bundle the law with other law enforcement reforms.