Tag: kansas

GOP Kansas Senate President Is ‘Open’ To Limited Medical Marijuana For Seriously Ill While Dismissing Public Support For Legalization

The GOP Kansas Senate leader says he’s “open” to medical marijuana—but only in restricted form for seriously ill or terminal patients. And he might want to do a pilot program first before potentially expanding the limited reform.

During an interview with KCUR that aired on Thursday, Senate President Ty Masterson (R) was asked about his willingness to enact cannabis legalization given how recent polling shows overwhelming public support for the policy change.

He first suggested that most Kansans only support medical cannabis for “palliative care,” and claimed that “recreational was not addressed as a majority” in the recent survey. The host pressed him, pointing out that the recent Kansas Speaks fall poll found 67 percent support for taxing and regulating adult-use marijuana.

“If you look at that question, I think most people would answer yes, but they don’t know what they’re actually saying yes to,” Masterson, whose chamber declined to act on a House-passed medical marijuana legalization bill in 2021, argued. He cited concerns with the implementation of adult-use legalization in neighboring Oklahoma.

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Government-Run Grocery Store Is Predictably Losing Money

Chicago’s city government is infamously corrupt and unable to provide basic services like education and public safety consistently, but Mayor Brandon Johnson is pushing for the city to also try running a grocery store.

It wouldn’t be the first government-run grocery store—and not even the first one in the United States. For some context about what Chicago is planning, The Wall Street Journal dispatched a reporter to check out the municipal-owned grocery store in Erie, Kansas, which opened in 2021.

How’s it going there? Uh, not great.

“Erie Market, which the city took over in 2021, is losing money almost every month amid stiff competition from a Walmart 15 miles away and a Dollar General across the street,” reports the Journal‘s Joe Barrett. Erie Market posted just a single profitable month during 2022 and lost $132,000.

Maybe Erie’s erstwhile government grocers didn’t realize that—unlike with other government services—grocery stores are subject to competition. Bummer.

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Fentanyl’s littlest victims: Dozens of babies, toddlers die in Missouri and Kansas

The boy’s tiny lifeless body lay on a bed last year inside a home along The Paseo. When Kansas City police officers found 2-year-old Cillian Miller in August 2022, he was wearing only a green T-shirt and was naked from the waist down. Most of his body was covered in a blanket except his feet, which were already discolored, court records show. Strewn throughout the home were new and used syringes, glass pipes and “multiple strips of foil with apparent burnt residue.” One pipe was left underneath a partially eaten McDonald’s cheeseburger on the dining room table. And somewhere inside that home, the child came across fentanyl. Tests would later show the little boy was yet another victim of the drug ravaging the nation and taking hundreds of lives in the Kansas City area. In KC, and across both Missouri and Kansas, dozens of little children have died from the illicit drug in the past three years, The Star has found in an ongoing investigation into the toll fentanyl has taken on our community. This report on our youngest victims launches an extensive project that will include community outreach and stories about the broader impact of fentanyl on the Kansas City area and the challenges of policing the problem. Unlike other drug crises, including crack, these children aren’t suffering from debilitating addictions because their parents were using; they are dying of actual fentanyl overdoses. The babies and toddlers — ages 4 and under — have come across the synthetic opioid and its residue in their homes, inside hotel rooms and even at a city park. Their deaths have largely gone unnoticed, ending up as statistics inside annual state reports on child deaths or in records kept by county medical examiners. Most of the attention on fentanyl has focused on teens or young adults and the awareness that “one pill can kill.”

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TikTok-Famous Police Chief Swapped Incest Vids on Secret Twitter Account: Feds

A TikTok-famous small-town police chief traded incest videos via a secret Twitter account discovered during a search of his home office, according to a newly unsealed federal complaint reviewed by The Daily Beast.

Joel Justice Womochil, 38, went by “@ictbaddad” on the social media platform now known as X, with a profile picture of “Pedobear”—which the complaint describes as “a pedophilic cartoon utilized by some individuals engaged in the pedophile community.”

“Hello kids :)” read the banner across the top of the now-defunct account’s profile page. Womochil, as @ictbaddad, described himself online as a “38 w male looking 4 that special girl that was raised right and wants 2 continue the tradition,” according to the complaint. “If u luv the little things In life message on Wire same name[.]”

Womochil became police chief in Burns, Kansas, a town of 250 people, in February 2022, and served until his sudden resignation in early August. He said only that it was in the “best interest of me and this department,” though he continued working part-time as a detention deputy in neighboring Butler County. A little over a week later, Womochil was arrested on state charges of possessing child sexual abuse material. As of Friday, he is now facing two federal counts of receipt and possession of child pornography, with penalties that could put the disgraced lawman behind bars for decades.

The details of what Womochil allegedly had been seeking out and exchanging online have not been previously revealed.

His TikTok videos of life as a police officer regularly racked up tens of thousands of views, with some getting more than 600,000.

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Wichita Police Department & the FBI Partner with Othram to Identify the Suspect in the 1989 Murder of Krista Martin

In October 1989, the body of twenty-year-old Krista Martin was found beaten to death in her Wichita, Kansas apartment located on South Osage Street. A concerned friend visited her home in the early hours of October 2, 1989, and discovered Krista. Wichita Police Department responded to the scene of the crime and began their investigation. It was determined that Krista died from blunt force trauma to the back, left side of her head. Initial investigative efforts included the collection of DNA evidence. Although DNA testing and the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) systems were not available at the time, the DNA evidence was carefully preserved.

Despite conducting numerous interviews and analyzing the available evidence, investigators were unable to identify a suspect. Undeterred, investigators continued to scrutinize the evidence and gather new leads. DNA samples were collected from multiple individuals for comparison with the evidence from the scene, but no match was found. In 2009, DNA evidence from the crime scene was submitted to the Sedgwick County Regional Forensic Science Center, resulting in the development of a potential suspect profile. This profile was uploaded to CODIS, but it did not lead to any matches. Further DNA sampling from potential suspects also proved unsuccessful. Despite law enforcement’s extensive efforts to identify the suspect, the case went cold.

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Kansas Police Chief Who Led Raid on Small Kansas Newspaper Owner’s Home and Caused Her Death Has Been Suspended

The Kansas Police Chief who led a raid on a small Kansas newspaper has been suspended from his post. Dave Mayfield, the mayor of Marion, suspended Chief Gideon Cody on Thursday. He did not go into detail or discuss whether or not he is being paid.

The searches occurred on August 11th, and has brought Marion into the spotlight regarding freedom of the press and First Amendment rights.

ABC News:

The police chief who led a highly criticized raid of a small Kansas newspaper has been suspended, the mayor confirmed to The Associated Press on Saturday.

Marion Mayor Dave Mayfield in a text said he suspended Chief Gideon Cody on Thursday. He declined to discuss his decision further and did not say whether Cody was still being paid.

Voice messages and emails from the AP seeking comment from Cody’s lawyers were not immediately returned Saturday.

The Aug. 11 searches of the Marion County Record’s office and the homes of its publisher and a City Council member have been sharply criticized, putting Marion at the center of a debate over the press protections offered by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The mayor was originally going to wait for the state police investigation to conclude but changed his mind and suspended him prior to the results.

Earlier in September The Gateway Pundit reported that a Federal lawsuit was filed by a reporter on the police chief who conducted the raid.

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Kansas Highway Patrol to pay $500,000 after passenger killed in police chase in Topeka

The Kansas Highway Patrol will pay a half million dollars to the family of a woman who died in a 2021 police chase in Topeka. The settlement was approved Wednesday by the State Finance Council. According to the lawsuit, Trooper Justin Dobler was patrolling on March 6, 2021, when he allegedly saw a car with a cracked windshield. It looked similar to a white Ford Crown Victoria that was on a list of stolen vehicles. He attempted to pull the vehicle over, but the driver did not stop and a chase began. About 45 seconds into the pursuit, the lawsuit said Dobler identified the car as a Mercury Grand Marquis. Dobler provided dispatch information including the license plate number and was told a couple minutes later that the vehicle was not stolen. The vehicle allegedly was speeding up to 55 mph in a 35 mph zone. He twice attempted a “tactical vehicle intervention” to disable the car. The third attempt was successful and the car spun out and struck a utility pole. Passenger Anita Benz, 45, was killed. Her daughter filed a federal lawsuit in March. The lawsuit said the highway patrol found Dobler had violated the agency’s chase policy.

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‘Stressed beyond her limits’: co-owner of Kansas newspaper dies after police raid

The co-owner of a small Kansas newspaper whose offices and staff were raided by local police officers conducting a leak investigation has died after the situation left her “stressed beyond her limits”, according to the publication.

Joan Meyer, 98, collapsed on Saturday afternoon and died at her home a day after she tearfully watched officers who showed up at her home with a search warrant cart away her computer as well as an internet router, reported the Marion County Record, which she co-owned. After officers also photographed the bank statements of her son, Record publisher Eric Meyer, and left her house in mess, Meyer had been unable to eat or sleep, her newspaper said.

Meyer was “in good health for her age”, the weekly newspaper asserted. And the headline of its report on her death said the police’s decision to raid the Marion Record’s offices along with the homes of its reporters and publishers was not only illegal – but had also contributed to bringing on the end of Meyer’s life.

Attempts to contact both Marion’s police chief – Gideon Cody – and the judge who authorized his agency to conduct the raids aimed at the Record, Laura Viar, for comment on Meyer’s sudden death were not immediately successful.

As the Record has told it, the weekly’s ordeal began when a confidential source leaked evidence that a local restaurant proprietor, Kari Newell, had been convicted of drunk-driving but continued using her car without a license.

The newspaper never published anything related to the information because its staff reportedly suspected the source was relaying information from Newell’s husband during their divorce. Nonetheless, after police notified Newell that the information was going around, she alleged at a local city council meeting that the newspaper had illegally obtained and disseminated sensitive documents.

According to reporting from the Kansas Reflector, Newell had admitted to the drunk-driving arrest as well as driving with a suspended license. Yet she insinuated that the leak was meant to jeopardize her license to serve alcohol and harm her business.

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Police stage ‘chilling’ raid on Marion County newspaper, seizing computers, records and cellphones

In an unprecedented raid Friday, local law enforcement seized computers, cellphones and reporting materials from the Marion County Record office, the newspaper’s reporters, and the publisher’s home.

Eric Meyer, owner and publisher of the newspaper, said police were motivated by a confidential source who leaked sensitive documents to the newspaper, and the message was clear: “Mind your own business or we’re going to step on you.”

The city’s entire five-officer police force and two sheriff’s deputies took “everything we have,” Meyer said, and it wasn’t clear how the newspaper staff would take the weekly publication to press Tuesday night.

The raid followed news stories about a restaurant owner who kicked reporters out of a meeting last week with U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, and revelations about the restaurant owner’s lack of a driver’s license and conviction for drunken driving.

Meyer said he had never heard of police raiding a newspaper office during his 20 years at the Milwaukee Journal or 26 years teaching journalism at the University of Illinois.

“It’s going to have a chilling effect on us even tackling issues,” Meyer said, as well as “a chilling effect on people giving us information.”

The search warrant, signed by Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, appears to violate federal law that provides protections against searching and seizing materials from journalists. The law requires law enforcement to subpoena materials instead. Viar didn’t respond to a request to comment for this story or explain why she would authorize a potentially illegal raid.

Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association, said the police raid is unprecedented in Kansas.

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Federal Judge Orders Kansas Cops To Stop ‘War’ On Drivers Coming From Legal Marijuana States

The Kansas Highway Patrol has been ordered to stop its infamous “two-step” technique by a federal judge, in what the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas calls a “huge win” for all motorists using state highways.

The U.S. district court ruled KHP’s policies and practices violate the Fourth Amendment, releasing a Friday opinion that the KHP “has waged war on motorists—especially out-of-state residents traveling between Colorado and Missouri on federal highway I-70 in Kansas.”

The trial challenged the constitutionality of the KHP’s policy of targeting out-of-staters and other “suspicious” people for vehicle searches by drug-sniffing dogs, along with the “Kansas two-step” maneuver. The “ two-step” is a technique taught to KHP personnel, in which they end a routine traffic stop and begin a separate effort to dig for information and gain entry to a vehicle to search for contraband.

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