TOPEKA — A Kansas Bureau of Investigation official told lawmakers on Thursday that crimes against children, cybersecurity threats and fentanyl are some of the top areas of concern for the state’s law enforcement agencies.
KBI Executive Officer Robert Stuart pulled out a one dollar bill to give a visual demonstration of the dangers of fentanyl to lawmakers on the House Committee on Transportation and Public Safety Budget. Stuart said if the bill was divided into 100 piece, and two of these pieces were combined, it would be two milligrams, or the same weight of a fatal dose of fentanyl.
Stuart is one of several KBI officials, under the guidance of Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, who have repeatedly warned about the dangers of fentanyl. Kansas Bureau of Investigation Director Tony Mattivi spoke to the state Board of Education earlier in the month, warning of the threat of cartel-manufactured opioids for Kansas students.
“It’s cheap and it’s easy to make and it’s easy to transport. … It does not take much fentanyl to kill one of our kids,” Stuart said Thursday.
The most recent data on child mortality in the state puts the number of 2021 child fentanyl-related deaths at nine, a figure far outstripped by the number of child homicide deaths and child deaths by suicide. For the same year, there were 32 child homicides and 29 suicide deaths.
The synthetic opioid is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, but the extent of fentanyl spread in Kansas is unknown. One KBI report puts the number of positive fentanyl tests conducted in the KBI laboratory at 953 in 2023, up from 692 positive tests the year before.
Stuart said the KBI was also committed to investigating crimes against children, as well as increasing cybersecurity.
“The attacks we see are getting bigger and bigger and more frequent and more complex and more successful,” Stuart said of cyber crimes.
A KBI report estimates Kansans lost $58 million in cybercrimes in 2022, and Kansans sent 2,399 complaints to the FBI’s internet Crime Complaint Center for the same year.
Stuart said the KBI’s budget enhancement requests, which will be released in the coming weeks, will reflect these concerns.