A woman was injured and three dogs were killed by police after officers served a narcotics search warrant at an East Side house Tuesday. The incident occurred about noon in the 2400 block of Drury Avenue. When officers arrived at the house, they found a Rottweiler chained to the front porch. When it began acting aggressively toward them, they shot it, said police spokesman Russ Dykstra. As the officers approached the door, the dog began to get up, and the officers shot it again. A bullet passed through the dog and either ricocheted or fragmented, striking a woman who had arrived at the front door, Dykstra said. [continues 166 words]
One of the Cowtown's hippest outdoor fiestas, the Hempfest, is on the ropes. That after a decade or so of outdoor grooving in support of legalizing (for practical uses) what some call marijuana. "The (KCK) city parks aren't allowing any live music," says Hempfest organizer Erik Branstetter, an owner of It's a Beautiful Day at 3918 Broadway. The shop is one of the area's last-remaining hippie-style boutiques. True enough says Burt Cavin, parks and rec deputy for the Wyandotte County/KCK Unified Government. The hempsters may have gotten away with illegal live music at Rosedale Park last year, Cavin says, but "we don't have bands in the parks now." Too noisy. [continues 414 words]
She testifies that he admitted role in drug slaying Joel Hopkins just had to tell someone how he helped kill Michael Davis, according to Linda Bascone, Hopkins' former girlfriend and a witness during the second day of Hopkins' trial. Bascone blotted her eyes Tuesday as she cried while testifying in Platte County Court that Hopkins had told her about killing Davis on May 4, 1997. Bascone said Hopkins and another man, Steven Masden, killed Davis in the basement of a house in Independence. Masden was convicted of murder in the case last year. [continues 344 words]
Epidemic Of '80s Gaining Even More Momentum Now WASHINGTON - In the late 1980s, as the crack epidemic reached a peak in America's largest cities, thousands of newborns were stranded in urban hospitals, abandoned by mothers too sick, too addicted to care for them. Since then hospitals, child-protective agencies and social workers have been working together to attack the problem with intervention programs funded in part by Congress under the Abandoned Infant Assistance Act. But after a decade of such effort, the numbers of "abandoned" and "boarder babies" in hospitals have increased substantially, according to a study for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. [continues 456 words]
TOPEKA - A coordinated effort to rid a Topeka public housing project of drug dealers resulted in 36 drug-related arrests over the weekend, state and federal law enforcement agencies said Monday. The arrests were part of Operation Safe Home, a 1994 federal initiative designed to bring state and federal agencies together to eliminate drugs, firearms and gangs from public housing. During the 10-month investigation, two undercover agents made 75 narcotics purchases at the Pine Ridge Manor on Topeka's east side. [continues 176 words]
Now Friends And Foes Alike Wonder... Does Life Sentence She's Serving Exceed Her Crime? There are 30 women serving life sentences in Kansas prisons. Twenty-nine of them are convicted murderers or kidnappers. The other is Gloria Van Winkle. Her crime was possessing one-sixteenth of an ounce of cocaine, equivalent to less than two artificial sweetener packets. She has been locked up since 1992, and she won't get to see the parole board for the first time until 2007. [continues 997 words]
The Missouri Supreme Court should determine whether a Jackson County Drug Court commissioner has the power to try cases and sentence criminals, an appeals court ruled Tuesday. The appeals court in Kansas City forwarded the constitutional question to the Missouri Supreme Court. The case challenging the authority of Drug Court Commissioner Marco Roldan is among several statewide in which lawyers are challenging the power of commissioners. Some contend that commissioners, who also handle such things as Family Court, Probate Court and other matters, do not have the power to rule on cases even if a judge signs off on their actions. [continues 152 words]
Congress refuses to pay for counting of '98 referendum WASHINGTON - Locked away in the memory of a government computer are election results that Congress doesn't want the voters of the nation's capital to see. No one has seen them, in fact - not the city's election officials, whose computer recorded the votes; not the members of Congress, who control the political life and the pocketbook of the capital; not the federal judge who, after five months, still has not ruled on whether anyone should see them. [continues 1023 words]
WASHINGTON -- Locked away in the memory of a government computer are election results that Congress doesn't want the voters of the nation's capital to see. No one has seen them, in fact -- not the city's election officials, whose computer recorded the votes; not the members of Congress, who control the political life and the pocketbook of the capital; not the federal judge who, after five months, still has not ruled on whether anyone should see them. They are the results of a referendum last November to decide whether marijuana should be legalized in the District of Columbia strictly for medical uses, such as for AIDS victims. In a city with the highest number of AIDS-related deaths per capita in the country, the issue resonated with a special urgency. [continues 973 words]
Osawatomie Man Was Fatally Shot In Home By Officer Officers identified themselves as they raided an Osawatomie, Kan., house in February and tried to use plastic wrap to save a man who was shot by an officer, tapes of the drug raid show. On Tuesday, Miami County Attorney David Miller let reporters hear an audiotape and see a videotape from the raid, part of the evidence he used to determine that officers broke no laws in the Feb. 13 shooting that left Willie Heard, 46, dead. [continues 464 words]
County attorney says police acted in self-defense Police officers didn't commit a crime when they shot and killed an Osawatomie man in February while serving a search warrant on his house, a prosecutor said Monday. Willie Heard, 46, was shot once in the chest by a Paola police officer during a raid at 1:25 a.m. Feb. 13. Officers from the Osawatomie and Paola police departments and the Miami County sheriff's department were searching Heard's house for cocaine that they thought was being sold there. [continues 505 words]
Laws Likely To Get A Legislative Tweak Instead Of An Overhaul Don't look for any sweeping changes in Missouri drug laws this legislative session. Despite a flurry of bills proposed early in the session when it became clear police weren't following state laws for handling seized drug money, lawmakers now realize the issue is too complex to repair before the session ends in May. Legislators say there are too many unknowns - including how much money is involved. Instead, legislators probably will just tweak current laws this year to assure most of the drug money seized by Missouri law enforcement agencies gets to education, as the laws intend. [continues 733 words]
Marijuana has therapeutic uses; the law should reflect that Missouri and other states should protect patients from prosecution Federal authorities should rescind their prohibition of the medical use of marijuana for seriously ill patients and allow physicians to decide which patients to treat. The government should change marijuana's status from that of a Schedule I (prohibited) drug ... to that of a Schedule II drug ... and regulate accordingly. - - Dr. Jerome Kassirer, editor, New England Journal of Medicine, Jan. 30, 1997 It is clear from available studies and rapidly accumulating anecdotal evidence that marijuana is therapeutic in the treatment of a number of serious ailments and is less toxic and costly than many conventional medicines for which it may be substituted. In many cases, marijuana appears more effective than the commercially available drugs it replaces. [continues 407 words]
JEFFERSON CITY - The Missouri Senate will investigate why drug money seized by state and local police has not been turned over to public education. Sen. Edward Quick, president pro tem of the Senate and a Liberty Democrat, said Thursday that he would choose a committee ``very, very soon'' to begin holding hearings on the matter. In the past two weeks a flurry of ballot measures have been proposed to address the diversion of drug money from schools, and Quick said hearings would sort through the facts and help lawmakers think out their remedies. [continues 694 words]
A coalition of Kansas health organizations will receive a $75,000 grant to make statewide improvements in the care that dying patients receive in their final days, the Midwest Bioethics Center in Kansas City announced last week. The grant is one of 15 totaling $2.6 million that are being awarded to organizations to enhance end-of-life care. The center is administering the grant program for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation based in Princeton, N.J., the nation's largest philanthropy dedicated exclusively to health care. [continues 278 words]
Missouri law requires police departments to send drug money they seize through state courts -- and sometimes police do it. But even when they do, police have used the court system to get the money back. Although that may not be a clear violation of state law, it violates the intent of sending drug money to state schools, legal experts say. "They are, in fact, circumventing something that is as important if not more important than the war on drugs, and that is the education of our youth," said Larry Schaffer, a defense attorney who also has worked as a prosecutor. [continues 693 words]
Russia: Citizen Soros' generosity In a season of grand philanthropic gestures, George Soros has now joined Ted Turner in announcing a munificent international gift. Soros will increase his Open Society Institute's activities in Russia by $300 million to $500 million over the next three years. That will more than double his current programs in Russia and easily exceed Washington's $95 million annual donation to Russia's civilian sector. The contribution adds to the $1.5 billion Soros has already given away overseas, the bulk of it to build civil society and independent media in formerly communist countries. [continues 293 words]
State has shut down more meth operations than any other state. By Regina Akers Staff Writer Missouri ranks first in the nation for the number of methamphetamine labs it has shut down, U.S. Attorney Stephen L. Hill Jr. said Monday. Speaking at a clay County Commission meeting, Hill said the federal Drug Enforcement Administration released the ranking recently. Four years ago Missouri authorities broke up six methamphetamine labs statewide. The could be as high as 50 this year, Hill said. [continues 207 words]
Congratulations to the president for recommending increasing cigarette pack prices by $1.50. If this program is as successful as the drug war, which took cocaine prices from $50 a gram to $5 a gram, cut heroin prices in half and made drugs available to every elementary school in the nation, this action means that cigarette prices will go down as the black market (free enterprise) takes over. Of course, you won't be able to choose what brands, and you won't know exactly what's in them why, they might even contain marijuana but who cares if the price goes back down to 30 cents a pack? Larry Monaghan Arcadia, Kan. [end]
State Rep Lloyd Daniel helped me understand the recent inhumane treatment of Missouri. inmates in Texas. He said President Eisenhower warned in the Cold War of the growing political influence of the "militaryindustrial complex." Companies wanted to keep profiting from building war machines. Today people should be equally concerned about the emergence in America of "a prisonindustrial complex." Small towns teetering on the edge of extinction have received new shopping centers, restaurants, motels and other feeder businesses after prisons have opened nearby, Daniel said in a recent speech at the Missouri Training Center for Men in Moberly. [continues 485 words]
