KANSAS CITY (AP) — Minority employees at Harley-Davidson’s plant in Kansas City have been subjected to years of harassment and discrimination — including having swastikas and nooses posted in the plant, frequent racial epithets and at least one assault, several employees said at a news conference organized by the NAACP-Kansas City on Friday.

“All the time I worked there it’s been there, it’s just ridiculous,” said Emmanuel Matthews Sr., who worked at the plant for more than two years. “This is 2019. This stuff has to stop. Something needs to be done.”

Matthews and other employees who spoke at the news conference work for Syncreon.US Inc., an affiliate of Syncreon, which supplies contract workers to the Harley-Davidson plant, but they said the harassment was directed at all minority employees. Matthews said he was assaulted by another worker at the plant but declined to discuss the details.

Harley-Davidson said in a statement that it does not tolerate any form of harassment or discrimination and actively enforces its code of conduct and anti-harassment policy along with well-established processes for employees to report concerns.

“Complaints that we were aware of were thoroughly investigated and action was taken based on the findings,” the statement reads. “As appropriate we also referred incidents and complaints to third-party employers who share our factory.”

Oswald Reid, president and CEO of Syncreon.US said in a statement Friday that the company doesn’t tolerate any of the alleged actions. He said the company provides many avenues to report harassment or discrimination, including a confidential “ethics line.” No complaints of racially discriminatory behavior have been reported to that line in the last two years, Reid said.

“Over the last three years, all alleged policy or Code of Conduct violations that we are aware of have been swiftly and effectively addressed,” Reid said. “As of this moment, there are no open investigations with regards to discriminatory behavior.”

Harley-Davidson plans to close the Kansas City plant this year and shift those operations to York, Pennsylvania. The Milwaukee-based company said the closing would eliminate 800 jobs in Kansas City.

Employees said the harassment has happened for years but has intensified as the plant’s closing approaches. They said they have seen graffiti telling black employees to die or to go back to Africa. The workers said when swastikas or racial epithets were reported, the images were sometimes left for days before being covered with spackle. They alleged management would say the incidents were being investigated but nothing ever happened and the perpetrators were rarely punished.

Rochelle Anthony, who was a union representative for the Steelworkers at the plant for nearly three years before she was fired, said she ran into constant roadblocks when she tried to file grievances and could never get a straight answer or feedback when she asked about her complaints.

“I tried,” she said. “I felt like I was fighting by myself. I couldn’t help them. It’s getting worse. We need help.”

Steve Nelson, general manager at the Kansas City plant, sent a letter to Harley-Davidson employees Thursday saying the company wanted to reassure them that the company is taking “all necessary steps” to enforce its policies. He said harassment of any kind “cannot and will not be tolerated at Harley-Davidson.” The letter included details of the company’s policies for reporting and investigating complaints.

The Rev. Rodney Williams, president of NAACP-Kansas City, said the national NAACP plans to ask Harley Davidson to launch an investigation at all of its plants to determine if discrimination is part of the company’s culture or is isolated to Kansas City.

“Whether it is closing or not, this is not acceptable,” Williams said in an interview. “We need to send a message that this not acceptable anywhere. Many employees came to us to complain so we felt it was our duty to give them a platform that they might be heard.”

MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) — The Manhattan-Ogden School Board has approved guidelines for transgender students in the school district.

The board voted 6-1 Wednesday to approve the guidelines, after discussing the issue since December.

The guidelines give students the right to be addressed by the name and pronoun they choose. It also allows students to use the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity, and it allows students to play for sports teams of their gender identity.

The board heard comments from 21 people expressing both support and opposition.

Some opponents cited religious reasons and others criticized allowing students to play for teams of their gender identity.

Board members who supported the policy said they wanted to do what they thought was best for the students.

 

TROY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for shaking his 3-month-old son so hard that he died.

A Lincoln County jury on Thursday found 29-year-old Steven Kyle Schnell guilty of felony child abuse,

The infant, Sawyer Schnell, was injured in October 2015 at the family’s home in the Moscow Mills area.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports Schnell told authorities he shook his son and patted his back because the child was choking.

But the jury found Schnell knowingly caused the injury that led to his son’s death.

By CORINNE BOYER, Kansas News Service

Long-running frustration about Amtrak’s willingness to keep a rail passenger line running through remote parts of the country has politicians threatening to block new directors to the agency.

A handful of U.S. senators demanded specifics by this week about how Amtrak plans to spend an added $50 million to keep the Southwest Chief line running from Chicago, through Kansas, to Los Angeles.

Hoping to force Amtrak to make long-term promises of keeping the Southwest Chief line, U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas had already used the power each senator holds to put a legislative block on the appointment of three nominees waiting to join the passenger rail agency’s board of directors.

Amtrak still has not specified when it will answer the pending questions from the Senate. A spokeswoman from Moran’s office said Amtrak has made contact, but not with answers about how it plans to alter long-distance routes or how the rail service calculates what states must chip in to support service.

“(Moran) will maintain those holds (on the nominations until he gets) assurances from Amtrak that it will continue to fund the Southwest Chief and funds that rail service,” said Moran spokeswoman Morgan Said.

Moran and other senators have criticized Amtrak for proposals to replace train services with buses along some parts of the route.

Amtrak officials did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

In February, Congress gave $50 million for upkeep of the route to Amtrak to keep the line working through September. Last year, Amtrak proposed replacing service from Dodge City to Albuquerque with buses, but the federal budget prohibits the use of buses to replace long-distance train service along the route.

In early April, a group of 11 senators sent Amtrak a letter demanding more detail about its plans for the Southwest Chief and how, more broadly, it decides which long-distance routes are worth operating.

The Senate letter also addressed Amtrak’s claims that ridership is down. The most recent data provided by Amtrak says more than 52,000 passengers boarded the Southwest Chief line in Kansas in 2017, up 5.7 percent from 2016.

With 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. departures, Newton, the busiest station in the state, saw nearly 16,000 passengers in 2017. Erin McDaniel, communications director for the City of Newton, says the town supports the Southwest Chief and partners with other cities to fund it.

“We know many of our residents use it to get to Chicago as well as the Southwest,” McDaniel said.

Keeping the Southwest Chief running is important to Newton because preliminary efforts looking at establishing train service to connect Newton to the Heartland Flyer route, which runs from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth, Texas, are underway.

“There used to be a train route that went there years ago,” McDaniel said, “but if the Southwest Chief goes away, dreams of extending the Heartland Flyer would go away with it.”

Over the last year, Amtrak has removed ticket agents from many stations. But Assistant City Manager for Dodge City Melissa Mccoy said the city employs staff at its train depot.

“We have few options in terms of public transportation,” McCoy said. She said ridership jumps with tourists in the summer.

Without the Southwest Chief route, McCoy says some Dodge City residents wouldn’t be able to travel long distances.

“We have a lot of working class folks, and they have limited income,” she said. “Amtrak provides them a way to visit family and go on vacation and without that they might not have it all.”

An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed the reason a hold was placed on Amtrak directors’ appointments. U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran took that action to secure a pledge to keep the Southwest Chief line running.

Corinne Boyer is a reporter based in Garden City for the Kansas News Service. Follow her @Corinne_Boyer.

LADUE, Mo. (AP) — A suburban St. Louis police officer indicted for shooting a shoplifting suspect has resigned from her department.

Ladue Police Officer Julia Crews submitted a letter of resignation on Friday, two days after St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell announced that Crews was indicted on a charge of second-degree assault.

Her attorney has said Crews meant to use her stun gun but mistakenly grabbed her service revolver.

The shooting happened April 23 outside a grocery store in Ladue, one of Missouri’s wealthiest communities. The 37-year-old officer is white. The woman who was shot, identified by relatives as 33-year-old Ashley Hall, is black.

Hall remains hospitalized with serious injuries, though police have said she is expected to survive.

Defense attorney Travis Noble says Crews was “devastated” by the shooting.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas lawmakers who support expanding Medicaid blocked passage of the next state budget Friday in a high-stakes standoff designed to force the Legislature’s conservative Republican leaders to allow an expansion plan backed by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

Kelly’s election last year raised hopes that Kansas would join 36 other states that have expanded Medicaid or seen voters pass ballot initiatives. But, like North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, two other Democrats pushing to expand Medicaid, she faces a GOP-controlled Legislature.

The Kansas House voted 63-61 against an $18.4 billion spending blueprint for the budget year that begins in July. House and Senate negotiators hashed out details Thursday night that were favorable for Kelly, fellow Democrats and moderate Republicans, with extra money for higher education, the prison system and state employee pay raises.

Democrats and moderate Republicans praised the proposed budget but saw the vote as their chance to pressure the Senate’s GOP leaders into relenting on plans to delay an expansion vote until next year.

“There’s a lot in there that’s really good, but we’ve got a major issue facing the state,” said House Minority Leader Tom Sawyer, a Wichita Democrat. “We’ve got 130,000 to 150,000 Kansans who’ve been waiting, who’ve been waiting for years, for health care.”

GOP leaders were determined to keep trying to pass a budget, and lawmakers remained in session Friday night. Budget negotiators worked on a new, less generous spending blueprint while top Republicans tried to peel GOP moderates away from Democrats. With the talks open again, extra funds for higher education and other spending were in doubt.

The Senate has yet to debate a Medicaid expansion bill approved by the House in March, and top Republicans argue that lawmakers need more time to get the details right. Kelly has called it a “stall tactic” and is pushing lawmakers to go ahead now, so that expanded Medicaid health coverage can start in January.

The move thwarted top Republicans’ plans to wrap up lawmakers’ business for the year Friday, well ahead of the traditional 90-day mark on May 17.

GOP leaders wanted to pass a bill providing relief to individuals and businesses paying higher state income taxes because of changes in federal tax laws at the end of 2017, a smaller plan than one Kelly vetoed in March. The Senate approved it Thursday night, and supporters needed only a favorable House vote to send it to Kelly.

But lawmakers aren’t finished until they pass a budget because state government can’t operate past June or distribute $4 billion to its public schools without one. That created an opportunity for expansion supporters if they can hold up the spending blueprint.

“I ask that you not play games with this budget,” said House health committee Chairwoman Brenda Landwehr, a conservative Wichita Republican and expansion opponent.

Expansion advocates have been frustrated by their inability to get a bill out of committee in the Senate. The measure has bipartisan support in both chambers, but GOP conservatives who oppose it hold key leadership jobs. Top Republicans argue that an expansion plan is likely to prove more costly to the state than Kelly’s administration projects and want to consider alternatives, including work requirements.

About 15 expansion supporters dropped several thousand leaflets in the Statehouse rotunda Friday morning, each depicting a past-due hospital bill spattered with blood. The leaflets said hundreds of Kansas residents will die needlessly each year without expansion and each had the picture of a GOP senator on one side.

“When there’s extreme behavior coming out of the Senate leadership, that requires us to try to force their hand,” said Logan Stenseng, a 20-year-old University of Kansas public administration student who participated in the brief protest.

The protest didn’t move prominent Medicaid expansion opponents. Senate health committee Chairman Gene Suellentrop, a conservative Wichita Republican, noted that a leaflet with his photo contained another senator’s quote on the other side and he said the mismatch suggest the protesters “probably know very little about Medicaid expansion.”

“They need to go back to college,” Suellentrop said.

Advocates have pushed for Medicaid expansion in Kansas since 2012 and passed a bill in 2017, only to see it vetoed by then-Republican Gov. Sam Brownback. Democrats in North Carolina are hoping to include expansion in their state’s budget, but they face resistance from GOP legislative majorities and are suggesting that a veto by Cooper is ahead, with potentially protracted negotiations to follow.

___

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas lawmakers who support expanding Medicaid promised Friday to try to block passage of the next state budget in a high-stakes standoff designed to force the Republican-controlled Legislature’s conservative leaders to allow an expansion plan backed by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

The House planned to vote Friday on an $18 billion-plus spending blueprint for the budget year that begins in July. House and Senate negotiators hashed out details Thursday night that were favorable for Kelly, fellow Democrats and moderate Republicans, with extra money for higher education, the prison system and state employee pay raises.

The Senate has yet to debate a Medicaid expansion billapproved by the House in March, and top Republicans want to postpone a vote until next year, arguing that they need more time to get the details right. Kelly has called it a “stall tactic” and is pushing lawmakers to go ahead and expand Medicaid health coverage to as many as 150,000 more people this year.

Top Republicans wanted lawmakers to wrap up business for the year Friday after passing a bill providing relief to individuals and businesses paying higher state income taxes because of changes in federal tax laws at the end of 2017, a smaller plan than one Kelly vetoed in March. The Senate approved it Thursday night, and supporters needed only a favorable House vote to send it to Kelly.

But lawmakers aren’t finished until they pass a budget because state government can’t operate past June without one. That created an opportunity for expansion supporters if they can hold up the spending blueprint.

“That’s the plan right now,” said House Minority Leader Tom Sawyer, a Wichita Democrat. “Right now, it looks like it’s holding pretty firm.”

Expansion advocates have been frustrated by their inability to get a bill out of committee in the Senate. The measure has bipartisan support in both chambers, but GOP conservatives who oppose it hold key leadership jobs. Top Republicans argue that an expansion plan is likely to prove more costly to the state than Kelly’s administration projects and want to consider alternatives, including work requirements.

About 15 expansion supporters dropped several thousand leaflets in the Statehouse rotunda Friday morning, each depicting a past-due hospital bill spattered with blood. The leaflets said hundreds of Kansas residents will die needlessly each year without expansion and each had the picture of a GOP senator on one side.

“When there’s extreme behavior coming out of the Senate leadership, that requires us to try to force their hand,” said Logan Stenseng, a 20-year-old University of Kansas public administration student who participated in the brief protest.

The protest didn’t move prominent Medicaid expansion opponents. Senate health committee Chairman Gene Suellentrop, a conservative Wichita Republican, noted that a leaflet with his photo contained another senator’s quote on the other side and he said the mismatch suggest the protesters “probably know very little about Medicaid expansion.”

“They need to go back to college,” Suellentrop said.

Blocking the budget held risks for Democrats and moderate Republicans. If the spending plan failed, budget negotiators could reopen talks and rethink an extra $35 million for the prison system, $33 million for higher education or 2.5 percent pay raise for state employees included in it.

“I would say they don’t get a better budget than this,” said Rep. Kyle Hoffman, a conservative Coldwater Republican. “If we go back, things start getting stripped out.”

___

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The Latest on flooding in the Midwest (all times local):

5p.m.

The body of a kayaker missing since Wednesday has been found in a swollen southwest Missouri creek, the fourth person to die in the latest round of spring flooding.

Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. John Lueckenhoff says troopers found the body of 35-year-old Scott M. Puckett of Forsyth, Missouri, Friday afternoon in Bull Creek. The body of his friend, 23-year-old Alex Ekern, was found Thursday.

Puckett and Ekern were among three men who began paddling Wednesday afternoon in the creek near the small town of Walnut Shade. The patrol says they were swept over a low-water bridge and caught in what is called a hydraulic, which creates a washing-machine effect that is hard to escape.

One of the men was able to escape and climbed a steep bank seeking help.

Flooding also claimed the life of a camper found Wednesday after he was caught in waters from an overflowed creek near the town of Ava, also in southwest Missouri. And in northern Indiana, a 2-year-old was killed when his mother drove onto a flooded road.

___

 

The latest round of Midwestern flooding has claimed at least three lives, closed hundreds of roads and forced residents of threatened towns to shore up threatened levees with sandbags as waters rise to historic levels in some communities.

The National Weather Service issued flood warnings Friday along a large swath of the Mississippi River, as well as flash flood watches for parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas after recent rounds of heavy rain.

In southwest Missouri, authorities are searching for a paddler whose kayak overturned in a flooded creek, one day after finding the body of his friend, 23-year-old Alex Ekern. They were among three men who began paddling Wednesday afternoon on Bull Creek near the small town of Walnut Shade when they were swept over a low-water bridge.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol says one of the kayakers was eventually swept downstream, climbed a steep bank and sought help.

Flooding also claimed the life of a camper who was found Wednesday after he was caught in waters from an overflowed creek near the town of Ava, also in southwest Missouri. And in northern Indiana, a 2-year-old was killed when his mother drove onto a flooded road.

___

7 a.m.

Swollen Missouri waterways are inundating farmland, closing roads and straining levees.

The National Weather Service has issued flood warnings for Friday for parts of southern Missouri and stretches of the state along the Mississippi River.

The Mississippi is expected to crest Friday afternoon in Hannibal at the third-highest level on records. The Hannibal Courier-Post reports that the height of the city’s flood gates and levee will be raised as a precaution. Hannibal Board of Public Works general manager Heath Hall says that community is “preparing for the worst” but was hopeful that “reality is better.”

The surging Mississippi also was causing problems in West Alton, where the town’s 500 or so residents were under a voluntary evacuation.

Along the Osage River, high waters are inundating campsites at the Mari-Osa Campground.