MILWAUKEE — Matt Adams and Oscar Taveras homered, and the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Milwaukee Brewers 5-3 on Saturday night to open a four-game lead in the NL Central.
Lance Lynn pitched six effective innings as St. Louis won for the seventh time in its last eight games. Trevor Rosenthal got three outs for his 43rd save in 48 chances.
The Brewers have lost 10 of 11. Ryan Braun had an RBI single in the first, and Lyle Overbay doubled home a run in the sixth.
Milwaukee right-hander Kyle Lohse (12-9) lasted just four innings. He allowed five runs and four hits with two walks.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Mormon church and other faiths are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and settle the question of whether states can outlaw gay marriage once and for all.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in a statement Friday, said it joined a friend-of-the-court brief asking the high court to hear Utah’s marriage case.
Also taking part in the filing were the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Ethics & Religious Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
Each teaches that marriage is between a man and a woman.
Multiple organizations and governmental entities on both sides of the debate have filed similar briefs asking the court to take up the issue.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is defending his decision to delay taking executive action on immigration until after November’s congressional elections.
In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Obama denies that his decision was political. He blamed the altered timetable on the immigration crisis this summer in which tens of thousands of unaccompanied Central American children crossed into the U.S. through Mexico.
Obama had earlier pledged to take action by the end of the summer. But he has been under pressure from Democrats nervous about how any action taken before November would affect their campaigns.
In the interview airing Sunday, Obama says he still intends to act if Congress does not.
He says delay will allow him to explain to the public why executive action is right for the country.
Big crowd attended Saturday’s debate at the State Fair
HUTCHINSON, Kan. (AP) — Republican Sen. Pat Roberts touted his experience and his party ties during his first debate with a surprisingly strong independent campaign challenger for his seat.
Roberts went on the offensive against 45-year-old businessman Greg Orman from the outset of Saturday’s debate at the Kansas State Fair in Hutchinson. The race has become surprisingly competitive and could affect the broader fight for control of the Senate.
The 78-year-old three-term senator said he’s the only candidate with proven experience and the only one working against Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Orman said he’ll focus on solving problems, not partisan politics. Orman has promised to caucus with whatever party holds the majority.
Roberts has overhauled his campaign and the race was roiled this week by the Democrat’s attempted withdrawal.
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – Tammy Dickinson, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced today that a Lebanon, Mo., automobile dealer has been indicted by a federal grand jury for a mail fraud scheme in which he sold dozens of vehicles with fraudulent titles that greatly underreported the actual mileage of the vehicles.
Kenneth W. Smith, 60, of Lebanon, was charged in a seven-count indictment returned under seal by a federal grand jury in Springfield, Mo., on Aug. 26, 2014. That indictment has been unsealed and made public upon Smith’s arrest and initial court appearance.
Smith operates Cars Unlimited in Lebanon. According to today’s indictment, Smith obtained fraudulent replacement titles for dozens of vehicles that were sold by Cars Unlimited between February 2010 and Nov. 7, 2011. Smith (operating through Cars Unlimited) allegedly applied for and received 54 replacement titles from the state of Missouri, each of which underreported the vehicle’s actual mileage between 95,000 and 209,000 miles. Smith allegedly resold these 54 vehicles at auto auctions using the fraudulent replacement titles. These 54 vehicles were sold for an aggregate total of approximately $346,450.
Beginning in February 2010, when Smith purchased vehicles (through Cars Unlimited) at auto auctions, the vehicle titles he received showed each vehicle’s actual mileage. After purchasing a vehicle, Smith allegedly submitted an “Application for Missouri Title and License” seeking a replacement title for the vehicle. Although he sought a replacement title, the indictment says, he in fact possessed the original title for the vehicle.
In each of those instances, Smith allegedly forged the signatures of the previous owner of the vehicle. The state of Missouri prepared a replacement title that was mailed to Smith at Cars Unlimited.
The federal indictment charges Smith with seven counts of mail fraud.
Dickinson cautioned that the charges contained in this indictment are simply accusations, and not evidence of guilt. Evidence supporting the charges must be presented to a federal trial jury, whose duty is to determine guilt or innocence.
This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Gary Milligan. It was investigated by the FBI and the Missouri Department of Revenue.
James Green, a second cousin of Joseph Jennings, lights a candle that’s part of a curbside memorial created by Jennings’ friends and family members near the Orscheln Farm & Home store in Ottawa. Jennings, who had a mental illness, was shot and killed during an Aug. 23 altercation with Ottawa police in the store’s parking lot. “The world needs to understand that there are people out there who has issues and need help,” Green said. “This shouldn’t have happened.”-Photo by Dave Ranney
By Dave Ranney
KHI News Service
TOPEKA — Out of the 8,000 full- and part-time law enforcement officers in Kansas, only 1 in 4 have been trained to handle crisis calls involving the mentally ill.
Records show that 80 percent of the nearly 1,800 trained officers work in four high-population counties: Johnson, Sedgwick, Shawnee and Wyandotte.
The other 20 percent – about 360 officers – are spread across police and sheriff’s departments in the remaining 101 counties.
“We’re trying to address that,” said Rick Cagan, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Kansas. “It makes sense to have most of your crisis-trained officers in your metropolitan areas, because that’s where you have the most people. But at the same time, we have a lot of areas in the state that don’t have someone on their staff who’s been trained.”
Since 2007, NAMI Kansas has coordinated annual conferences that link police and sheriff’s departments with mental health officials in their communities to form crisis intervention teams (CIT).
The need for – or a consequence of not having – crisis intervention training was underscored last month when Ottawa police officers shot and killed 18-year-old Joseph Jennings during an Aug. 23 parking lot altercation outside the Orscheln Farm & Home store.
Cagan said he has no record of Ottawa police taking the crisis intervention course. Ottawa and Franklin County law enforcement officials did not respond to KHI News Services calls seeking comment.
‘Never got a break’
Jennings’ aunt, Brandy Smith, said her nephew suffered seizures that often led him to feel depressed, delusional and suicidal.
“He had them when he was a little kid,” Smith said. “He stopped having them when he was about 9, but they’d started up again when he was about 14 or 15.”
Since aging out of the state’s foster care system in December, Jennings had been living off and on with Smith and her husband, Billy, and with his grandmother, Charlene Smith. Jennings had lived in foster homes since he was 11.
“He was just a really good kid who never got a break,” Brandy Smith said. “I love him like a son.”
Smith said that four days before the shooting, Jennings was hospitalized for a seizure that “lasted an hour and a half.”
At home three days later, he attempted suicide. “It was a drug overdose,” Smith said. “He’d taken all his pills, like 10 trazodone (an antidepressant) and 50 Ativan (for anxiety), all at once.”
Joseph Jennings was shot and killed during an Aug. 23 altercation with Ottawa police. He was 18.
Jennings spent that night in the psychiatric unit at Ransom Memorial Hospital. “He was discharged the next day at 4:20 p.m.,” Smith said. “We brought him home, he took a nap, he got up and he asked me for his keys because he wanted to go for a ride – he loved his motorcycle.
“I said, ‘Why don’t you wait a while?’” Smith said. “He said OK, sat down on the couch next to me, put his arm around me and told me that he loved me. I told him I loved him too. He said, ‘Do you forgive me?’ and I said I did. I don’t know why he asked me that.”
A few minutes later, she said, Jennings rode his motorcycle around the block. When he returned he was upset.
“His bike had broken down and he couldn’t get it started, which really got him agitated,” she said. “I said, ‘It’s OK, we’ll get it fixed. Go for a walk. Calm down,’ and I went in to start dinner. The next thing I know, my husband runs in and says, ‘They’re getting ready to shoot Joe in the parking lot!’”
Smith said she ran barefoot to the Orscheln parking lot, which is about a block from her house. “I was screaming at them (police) at the top of my lungs: ‘Don’t shoot him! He’s suicidal! That’s Joseph Jennings! Don’t shoot him!’”
After the shooting, Ottawa law enforcement officials said officers had responded to a report of an armed man in the Orscheln parking lot. Police have neither confirmed nor denied that Jennings was armed. They’ve also not indicated how many times he was shot.
Smith said she and her husband don’t own a gun and that Jennings had never indicated that he owned a gun.
“I was there and I didn’t see a gun. My husband was there and he didn’t see a gun,” she said. “There were other witnesses there, and none of them have come to us and said they saw a gun. This happened in broad daylight. But I’m not going to argue with them (police) because I don’t know what they saw.”
Smith said the shooting occurred between 7:30 p.m. and 8 p.m.
Two of the policemen involved in the shooting, she said, had visited with Jennings prior to his hospitalizations earlier in the week.
“They had to have known who he was and that he was not alright,” she said. “But I don’t want this to be about that. I want this to be about police officers getting the knowledge and training they need so that this doesn’t happen again and no other family has to go through what we’ve been through.”
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation is investigating the events leading up to Jennings’ death.
“Our Crime Scene Response team was called to Ottawa on Saturday (Aug. 23) evening and worked through Sunday afternoon,” said Mark Malick, KBI special agent in charge of investigations. Another KBI team was called in to investigate the incident with the Ottawa Police Department and Franklin County Sheriff’s Office.
Often a matter of money
It’s unclear how much the crisis intervention training is likely to cost a small city’s or rural county’s law enforcement agencies.
“Like a lot of things, it all comes down to money,” said Jim Kramer, president of the Kansas Sheriffs’ Association. “Your smaller (law enforcement) departments can’t afford it, and it’s not something they use every day so it’s not in the limelight of the (county) commissioners or the (city) councils when it comes time to put your budget together.”
Kramer, who was chief of police in Cimarron for 18 years before becoming Gray County sheriff eight years ago, said most “rural and small-town” departments call their area mental health center for assistance when they’re summoned to deal with someone who’s thought to be mentally ill.
“If we’re dealing with someone who’s mentally ill, we call Area Mental Health (Center in Garden City) and they’ll send somebody over to evaluate them,” he said. “We do that before we go into arrest mode. That’s how most departments handle it. But that assumes we could get the individual calmed down and the situation wasn’t lethal.”
Kramer said his deputies are equipped with Tasers; their supervisors have non-lethal shotguns that fire pellet-filled bean bags, which can be more lethal than Tasers.
“In the last 10 years, we’ve probably had to ‘Tase’ two people,” he said. “There have been some others, but we’ve always managed to talk them down. It took hours and hours to do it, but we’ve always managed to talk them down.”
Smith said Ottawa police fired “three, maybe four” bean bags at Jennings.
Mental health training for law enforcement officers is optional. It’s not subject to state or federal mandates.
“It’s a local thing,” said Cagan of NAMI-Kansas. “There are some state and federal grants out there, but fundamentally it has to be a local initiative. That’s OK because the basic concept behind CIT is for this to be a community-level partnership and for there be an ongoing dialog between law enforcement, mental health providers and consumers.”
Cagan said Ford, Johnson, Leavenworth, Sedgwick, Shawnee and Wyandotte counties use crisis intervention teams. Lyon and Reno counties are working to restart their teams, he said, and Douglas County will begin CIT training early next year.
Police and sheriff’s departments also have the option of sending officers to a weeklong course at the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center near Hutchinson. The voluntary classes, which are similar to CIT, are offered twice a year for up to 35 students.
“It’s advanced and specialized training given to specific officers to respond to mental health emergencies,” said Mark Damitio, deputy assistant director at the training center in Hutchinson. “It’s provided in much the same fashion or belief that not every cop out there has to be a canine officer, not every cop has to be a narcotics detective, and not every cop has to have an advanced level of CIT training. But it sure is great when there is someone with that specialized talent who can respond” to a crisis call.
In 2012, Kansas legislators passed a resolution that declared CIT to be “best practice” in Kansas. Lawmakers also agreed to set aside the $50,000 that’s now used to underwrite the two classes at the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center.
The $50,000 is used to cover the room-and-board and training-material costs for 60 to 70 officers over a two-week period. The officers’ employers are expected to pay costs of covering their work shifts while they are in Hutchinson.
More funding in the works
In May, Gov. Sam Brownback announced that his administration planned to spend an additional $9.5 million on mental health services in the fiscal year that began July 1.
The plan, he said, included $500,000 for a not-yet-defined grant program aimed at diverting the mentally ill from the state’s jails and prisons.
“We’ll have an announcement on this soon,” Eileen Hawley, Brownback’s communications director, wrote in an email to KHI News Service.
Recommendations on how to spend the $500,000 are being developed by the governor’s Law Enforcement Behavioral Health Advisory Council, a group that includes Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, Kansas Department of Corrections Secretary Ray Roberts, Sedgwick County Sheriff Jeff Easter and Bill Cochran, a captain with the Topeka Police Department.
“We’ve had two telephone conferences and we’re getting ready to have a third,” Cochran said. “We’re still looking for the best, most efficient way – within the dollars that are available – to bring law enforcement and correction officers throughout the state more up to speed when it comes to dealing with people in mental health crises.”
Cochran said he’s expressed support for expanding both CIT and a program called Mental Health First Aid, which includes classes designed to help the public understand mental illness and respond to crises.
“CIT is a 40-hour curriculum; Mental Health First Aid is eight hours,” he said. “Your smaller departments can’t afford to give up an officer for 40 hours. Eight hours might be more affordable.”
But the cost of the programs, Cochran said, isn’t the only factor driving training decisions.
“In law enforcement, we spend a lot of money doing a lot of other things,” he said. “So a lot of this comes down to choosing how these dollars are going to be spent. I tell people: We’ve become very proficient in training our people on firearms; we’ve spent a lot of time and money doing it. That’s a good thing, but the likelihood of an officer using that firearm on a daily basis is pretty minimal.
“But that officer is far more likely to come across someone who’s suffering from a mental illness or who’s in a mental health crisis,” Cochran said. “Just about every call that officer is going to respond to is going to involve someone in one mental health crisis or another.”
In June and July, he said, Topeka police responded to 90 calls, involving someone threatening suicide. Officers were on the scene for one to two hours for most of those calls.
Sam Cochran, no relation to Bill, had a hand in launching the nation’s first CIT program in 1988 as a Memphis police officer.
“It’s not a perfect program by any means,” said Sam Cochran, who is now retired. “And I don’t want anyone to think that just because they have CIT they’ll never have to worry about something like this (Ottawa shooting) happening again. It’s not a panacea, but it’ll give responding officers some alternatives that they may not have now and, hopefully, it’ll slow things down and open up communication.”
On the national level, Kansas’ CIT programs often are cited for their progressiveness, Sam Cochran said.
“The expertise and the commitment for making this happen are there,” he said. “My advice for the people of Kansas is to go to their county commissions and city councils and say, ‘We want to see specific money put in the law enforcement budget to cover the overtime costs of sending two or three officers to CIT.”
Jennings’ aunt said she intends to heed Sam Cochran’s advice. “That’s what I want to see come out of this,” Brandy Smith said. “That’s what I want to see happen.”
Davis and Brownback just prior to Saturday’s Debate
HUTCHINSON, Kan. (AP) — Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and his Democratic challenger, Paul Davis, have laid out their positions on education, taxes, Medicaid expansion and renewable energy during their first debate.
Both candidates tried to portray themselves as supporters of education during Saturday’s debate at the Kansas State Fair. Some of the sharpest exchanges came over tax cuts under Brownback that have led to two credit downgrades and a projected budget shortfall for the state.
Davis is trying to woo moderate Republicans and independent voters who are concerned about the effects of Brownback’s tax cuts.
Davis told a standing-room-only crowd that he would expand Medicaid in Kansas if elected governor because rural hospitals are fighting to survive without the expansion. Brownback blamed the health care overhaul for lowering funding to the hospitals.
TOPEKA — A member of the Kansas Children’s Cabinet who’s known for actively encouraging private businesses to support early childhood development programs will not be appointed to a second four-year term on the advisory panel.
Jonathan Freiden said Gov. Sam Brownback’s appointments secretary, Kim Borchers, called him last week to say he would not be reappointed. His term expired June 30.
“This is the administration’s way of silencing someone who they saw as an obstacle to getting their way,” said Freiden, a moderate Republican from Leawood who was appointed to the Children’s Cabinet in 2010 by then-Gov. Mark Parkinson, a Democrat. “I’m very disappointed. You can look at this say, ‘Oh, it’s just sour grapes,’ and that’s fine. But I’ve been a very, very strong advocate for kids, and I take this work very, very seriously.”
Brownback’s office Friday announced that LeEtta Felter, vice president of the Olathe Public Schools Board of Education, had been appointed to Freiden’s seat on the Children’s Cabinet.
Felter has a bachelor’s degree from Southern Nazarene University in Oklahoma and a master’s degree in business administration from Baker University. She owns Cars4Less, an Olathe business that in July hosted a Brownback campaign event that featured an appearance by former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum.
Freiden, 40, is part-owner and CEO at U.S. Toy and Constructive Playthings, a national company based in Grandview, Mo. He has been a key player in the Children’s Cabinet’s efforts to build public and private support for early childhood programs in several Kansas communities.
Created in 1999, the Children’s Cabinet is a 15-member board charged with advising lawmakers on how best to spend monies generated by the state’s master settlement agreement with the nation’s tobacco companies – roughly $50 million annually – on early childhood development programs. Cabinet members also oversee the administration of several grant programs.
Frieden said that in the past three and a half years, he’d clashed with administration officials over several issues, including:
• proposing to eliminate the state’s Early Head Start programs.
• using Temporary Assistance for Needy Family funds to underwrite Reading Roadmap, a Brownback initiative aimed at raising the state’s fourth-grade reading scores.
• diverting $9.5 million in tobacco revenues to the State General Fund.
• allowing the awarding of a no-bid, $12 million contract to a Newton-based reading software company in former House Appropriations Committee Chairman Marc Rhoades’ district.
“We (cabinet members) are supposed to be good stewards of this money, and this money is supposed to be spent on early childhood development,” Freiden said. “It’s not supposed to be turned into some kind of honeypot for special projects that may be well-intended but are not early childhood development.”
Eileen Hawley, Brownback’s communications director, said the governor appreciated Freiden’s tenure.
“It is the Governor’s goal to engage as many Kansans as possible in the work of various commissions,” she wrote in an email to KHI News Service. “The Governor is proud of the work the Children’s Cabinet has done to build and support innovative models for at-risk children and families with a clear focus on achieving results, being accountable and encouraging change by asking businesses to work closely with education leaders.”
She disputed Freiden’s notion that Brownback had not heeded many recommendations from the Children’s Cabinet.
“Our efforts in early childhood programs have been to provide our youngest Kansans with the skills they need to succeed in life,” she wrote. “Ensuring that children are able to read by fourth grade, developing a skill that helps them throughout their lives and finding lifetime families for abused and neglected children in our system are NOT ‘pet projects.’
“These are necessities for Kansas if we are to move our state forward,” Hawley wrote. “Our children will one day be the employees and leaders of our state, and this early investment in their development is critical.”
Amanda Adkins, a Brownback appointee now in her third year as chair of the Children’s Cabinet, said Freiden’s “significant and important commitment to build business relationships in key communities, encouraging discussion on how early learning as an investment is important to future growth of the community, (and) is very much appreciated and in alignment with the vision Gov. Brownback has for the State of Kansas.”
Adkins is a former chair of the Kansas Republican Party.
Shannon Cotsoradis, a Children’s Cabinet member and chief executive with the advocacy group Kansas Action for Children, said Freiden’s departure “is a disappointment; it’s a loss.”
“Jonathan has really been a champion for kids within the business community,” Cotsoradis said.
Freiden said he contributed “a couple thousand dollars” to Brownback’s first gubernatorial campaign. “It was great,” he said. “I met with him, we talked, he was supportive. He said he really wanted to do good things. It was exciting. But then he didn’t follow through on his promises. He and his people talk the talk, but they don’t walk the walk. They’re dishonest.”
Freiden said he intends to vote for Paul Davis, the governor’s Democratic challenger.
“The Davis people asked me to be on some kind of economic advisory committee, but I couldn’t make the meeting and I’ve not gotten back to them,” he said. “I’ve not talked to anyone over there. I’m a registered Republican.”
Freiden said he would continue to advocate for children. “I’m not going to let this stop me.”
It is Kansas Legislators Day at the State Fair in Hutchinson.
The fair is hosting a gubernatorial debate between incumbent Governor Sam Brownback and Democratic challenger Paul Davis at 10:00 a.m.
At 11:00 a.m., the fair is hosting a senatorial candidate debate between incumbent Republican Senator Pat Roberts and independent candidate Greg Orman.
Live-Stream provided by WIBW Radio and WIBW News Now.
All debates are being held at Bretz & Young Injury Lawyers Arena
Missouri Western State University has been awarded a micro-grant of $3,000 to purchase and install two electric vehicle charging stations on the university’s campus.
The grant is part of the KCP&L Energizing Our Environment Micro-Grant Program, designed to help fund environmental projects in communities throughout KCP&L’s service region. The grants range from $500 to $3,000 and will provide nonprofit organizations an opportunity to improve the environment in their communities in a meaningful way.
“Our micro-grant program will impact thousands of lives and help improve our region,” said Elizabeth Danforth, KCP&L Director Public Affairs. “We are excited to partner with these organizations on their projects because we share a commitment to improving the environment.”
KCP&L received almost 150 applications for projects ranging from river cleanups to recycling programs to solar panel installations. Of those applications, KCP&L awarded almost 20 grants to nonprofits throughout the region.
For more information on KCP&L’s Energizing Our Environment Micro-Grant Program, please visit kcpl.com/energize.
MILWAUKEE — Matt Adams and Oscar Taveras homered, and the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Milwaukee Brewers 5-3 on Saturday night to open a four-game lead in the NL Central.
