Two burning questions for law enforcement in wake of Kansas council member investigation

Lenexa City Council member Melanie Arroyo reveals during the Aug. 5, 2025, council meeting that city police investigated her citizenship status and required her to prove her citizenship. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

The fruitless investigation into Lenexa City Council member Melanie Arroyo’s qualifications to serve as an elected official has mercifully ended after Lenexa police, acting on a tip from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (which operates under the jurisdiction of the Attorney General), secured a copy of Arroyo’s naturalization certificate.

Arroyo, who was naturalized in 2018, was cleared of any alleged wrongdoing regarding her immigration status.

But to justify the investigation, the city claimed that Lenexa police “had no choice but to investigate the matter because it is the City’s obligation to ensure” that Arroyo was “legally qualified to hold the position.”

No harm, no foul? Not exactly. The public awaits satisfactory answers to at least two burning questions.

 

Why did the KBI forward the tip to Lenexa police?

On July 8, 2025, a 74-year-old private citizen living in Lenexa left a voicemail for the KBI that mischaracterized legislative testimony Arroyo gave months earlier. As the KBI put it to Lenexa police, the tipster was concerned because Arroyo’s testimony advocated for “giv(ing) illegals more benefits” and allegedly “never acknowledged” whether she had become a naturalized citizen.

Opinion editor Clay Wirestone neatly unpacked the tip’s factual inaccuracies earlier this  month. But he wasn’t the first to do so. Lenexa police knew by July 23 that the tip was bogus, noting that after reading the testimony, “one would assume her immigration status was satisfied.”

It’s unclear whether anyone at the KBI read the testimony. Had the KBI spent the perfunctory amount of time it would have taken to verify Arroyo’s academic accomplishments, such as reading the testimony and calling the institutions at which Arroyo had studied, the agency would have learned that the tipster’s concerns did not amount to even reasonable suspicion that a crime had been committed.

Instead, on the grounds that the KBI does not typically investigate immigration-related matters, the agency forwarded the tip to local police to respond “however you deem appropriate.”

Immigration issues may well be out of the KBI’s wheelhouse. But on its website, the agency claims its mission includes “providing timely and accurate information to the criminal justice community.” Here, the agency either exercised discretion to forward an easily discredited tip or did so as a matter of course, letting the chips fall where they may.

Neither approach advances the agency’s stated mission to provide accurate information to its law enforcement partners.

 

Why did Lenexa police investigate the tip?

Apparently, it made no difference to Lenexa police that the tip failed to clear any evidentiary threshold. To them, receipt of the tip meant a police investigation was required.

According to a police spokesperson, whenever police discover “any complaint brought to our attention about matters pertaining to Lenexa City Code,” the department must “carr(y) out (its) duty to investigate.”

And as Lenexa city attorney Sean McLaughlin told Kansas Reflector, “just because evidence doesn’t exist doesn’t mean we don’t investigate.”

To the surprise of probably no one, the department’s internal policies do not support the notion that police were mandatorily obligated to investigate the tip.

According to public records obtained by Kansas Reflector and others, police described the tip internally as a “complaint regarding the citizenship or naturalization status of a City of Lenexa council member” in violation of a city ordinance requiring office holders to be “qualified electors.”

But department policy is silent about how police are to handle a tip from the KBI about an alleged violation of city code. Further, that ordinance contains no criminal penalties, raising the question of whether a police investigation into allegations that did not amount to commission of a crime was ever necessary.

Even so, the department’s “Investigations Division” created an “Investigative Report” about an “offense” Arroyo was accused of committing, strongly suggesting that police were operating under the assumption that they were conducting a criminal investigation.

If so, they fell short of their own standards.

Under Policy Directive 600, which covers how Lenexa police handle an “initial investigation” into allegations of criminal activity, officers are to advance the case only if “information indicates a crime has occurred.”  Moreover, officers are not permitted to proceed until they have conducted at least a “cursory examination” of the allegations.

But department records lay out a timeline that shows an order of operations that does not square with city policy governing the “initial investigation.”

The police department received the tip from the KBI on July 16. Instead of conducting a “cursory examination,” Lenexa Police Chief Dawn Layman called Arroyo on July 18 to tell her an investigation was about to commence, and on July 21, police provided Arroyo’s identifying information to a federal Homeland Security Investigations agent.

It took two more days, until July 23, for police to review Arroyo’s testimony, even though doing so would seem to be an essential component of completing the “cursory investigation.” At that point, rather than discovering evidence that a “crime has occurred,” police “assumed” Arroyo had “satisfied” her obligations to hold office.

Still, despite no evidence showing even reasonable suspicion that Arroyo had committed a crime, the investigation continued through July 28, ending only once she turned over a copy of her naturalization certificate to police and officers verified that the name on her driver’s license matched the name on the naturalization certificate.

Through it all, Arroyo has held her head high, telling the Reflector that she understood why the investigation happened but also was disappointed that police were not “sensitive with how to handle immigration issues.”

It should go without saying that expecting law enforcement to conduct investigations fairly and without bias is a sentiment shared by the public at large. The public also expects police to follow their own rules.

Officials should keep these considerations in mind the next time they think about marshaling a police investigation in response to an uncorroborated tip rife with falsehoods.

Max Kautsch focuses his practice on First Amendment rights and open government law. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.