DOUGLAS COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a suspect on multiple charges after an altercation with an officer during an arrest.
Paslay -photo from a previous arrest in Shawnee County
Just before 1a.m. Tuesday, police responded to the intersection of West 6th Street and Wakarusa Drive regarding a single motor vehicle accident involving a Chevrolet Silverado that struck a pole, according to a media release.
While Officers were responding to the scene, they were advised the suspect had moved the vehicle to a nearby parking lot and entered the business. The suspect, identified as 22-year-old Shane A. Paslay of Topeka was located and officer began investigating the accident and Mr. Paslay for suspicion of driving while intoxicated.
While an officer was attempting to place Paslay under arrest, he resisted and fled northbound on foot.
After a short foot pursuit, the officer caught Paslay who continued to resist and fight the officer. The officer utilized his expandable baton on Paslay who continued to fight the officer. During the struggle, the officer fell to the ground, landing on the officer’s expandable baton, which penetrated the officer’s body.
Paslay ran from the altercation but another officer located him and placed him under arrest.
Paslay is being held on requested charges of aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer, interference with the duties of a law enforcement officer, driving under the influence and operating a vehicle in violation of ignition interlock device.
The officer was transported to a local hospital for treatment of non-life threating injuries.
The government shutdown could cause a ripple effect across the federal government for years, according to former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. Vilsack recently told Politico that the effects could take years to realize, like the ramifications of pausing some Forest Service efforts to reduce fire hazards.
Specifically, Vilsack said, “You may not see the consequences of this until August of next year, when there is a worse fire than we would have had.” The shutdown is prompting many sectors of the U.S. economy, from real estate to agriculture, to brace for years of setbacks that include the pause in government loans and permitting processes.
Vilsack served as Agriculture Secretary from 2009 to 2017 under the Obama administration. He now serves as President and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council. The Department of Agriculture last week opened select Farm Service Agency offices for three days to serve farmers. However, the offices were reported to be near overwhelmed from the workload.
WARRENTON, Mo. (AP) — An eastern Missouri woman who said she killed her husband in self-defense has been acquitted of first-degree murder.
Hunter -photo Warren Co.
31-year-old Ashley Hunter, of Foristell, called Monday’s verdict “heaven sent.” It allowed her to leave the jail where she’d been held since her 2015 arrest.
She testified that her husband, 30-year-old Nicholas Hunter, assaulted her and insisted she turn over her electronic passwords.
Defense lawyer Scott Rosenblum argued that Nicholas Hunter had unpredictable moods, partially due to drinking and steroid use. Rosenblum said Nicholas Hunter choked his wife so hard that he lifted her off the ground on the night he was killed.
But the prosecution said Ashley Hunter had no signs of injury, although she told a dispatcher that her husband “just kept hitting her.”
The volume of non-real estate farm debt continued to increase in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to the Federal Reserve’s Agricultural Finance Databook. Total non-real estate farm loans were up nearly eight percent from a year ago, which was the seventh consecutive quarter of annual growth in loan volumes.
In a news release, the Federal Reserve said the increase in farm financing continued to be driven by lending to fund current operating expenses. The volume of operating loans reached a historical high for the fourth quarter, increasing more than $10 billion, or 22 percent year over year. Rounding out a year characterized by lower farm incomes, uncertainties about agricultural trade and the growth of lending volumes, interest rates on agricultural loans trended higher.
The combination of increased lending needs and higher interest rates has continued to raise the cost of financing at a modest pace. However, despite mounting pressure on the farm sector and limited profit opportunities, the value of farm real estate has continued to provide ongoing support for farmers.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s proposal to reopen the government, sweetened with immigration provisions that are aimed at mollifying Democrats but that have alienated some conservatives, is headed for Senate action, its prospects uncertain.
Senator Roy Blunt is a member of the Appropriations Committee
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will try to muscle through the 1,300-page spending measure, which includes $5.7 billion to fund Trump’s proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, the sticking point in the standoff between Trump and Democrats that has led to a partial government shutdown now in its 32nd day.
Meanwhile, another missed paycheck looms for hundreds of thousands of federal workers.
Senator Jerry Moran is a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee
Senate Republicans late Monday unveiled the legislation, dubbed the “End The Shutdown And Secure The Border Act,” but its passage this week is by no means certain.
Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the chamber but need Democrats to reach the usual 60-vote threshold for bills to advance. No Democrat has publicly expressed support for the proposal Trump announced over the weekend.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer’s office reiterated that Democrats are unwilling to negotiate any border security funding until Trump reopens the government.
“Nothing has changed with the latest Republican offer,” Schumer spokesman Justin Goodman said. “President Trump and Senate Republicans are still saying: ‘Support my plan or the government stays shut.’ That isn’t a compromise or a negotiation — it’s simply more hostage taking.”
The Republican plan is a trade-off: Trump’s border wall funding in exchange for temporary protection from deportation for some immigrants. To try to draw more bipartisan support, it adds $12.7 billion in supplemental funding for regions hit by hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters. All told, it would provide about $350 billion for nine Cabinet departments whose budgets are stalled. Other than the wall and immigration-related provisions, the core measure hews closely to a package of spending bills unveiled by House Democrats last week.
In exchange for $5.7 billion for Trump’s wall, the legislation would extend temporary protections against deportation to around 700,000 immigrants covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Trump has tried dismantling the Obama-era program, which covers people who arrived in the U.S. illegally as children, but has been blocked by federal lawsuits.
That figure is substantially lower than the 1.8 million people Trump proposed protecting a year ago in a plan that also included other immigration changes and $25 billion to pay the full costs of building his wall. Trump’s proposal was among several the Senate rejected last February.
The new Senate bill would also provide three more years of temporary protections against deportation to around 325,000 immigrants in the U.S. who have fled countries racked by natural disasters or violent conflicts. Trump has ended that program, called Temporary Protected Status, for El Salvador, which has the most holders of the protected status, as well as for Honduras, Nicaragua and several other countries.
Democrats said that Trump’s proposal for a three-year DACA extension didn’t go far enough and that he was simply offering to restore elements of immigration provisions he’d taken away.
Some on the right, including conservative commentator Ann Coulter, accused Trump of offering “amnesty.”
“No, Amnesty is not a part of my offer,” Trump tweeted Sunday, in response. He added: “Amnesty will be used only on a much bigger deal, whether on immigration or something else.”
While the House and the Senate are scheduled to be back in session Tuesday, no votes have been scheduled on Trump’s plan. McConnell spokesman David Popp said the GOP leader “will move” to vote on consideration of the president’s proposal this week. The bill includes funding for most domestic agencies.
House Democrats, meanwhile, are pushing ahead this week with their legislation to reopen the government and add $1 billion for border security — including 75 more immigration judges and infrastructure improvements — but no funding for the wall.
On Tuesday, Trump tweeted that Democrats are playing “political games” and repeated his claims that the wall is a solution to drugs and crime — although the Drug Enforcement Administration says only a small percentage of drugs comes into the country between ports of entry.
“Without a Wall our Country can never have Border or National Security,” Trump tweeted. “With a powerful Wall or Steel Barrier, Crime Rates (and Drugs) will go substantially down all over the U.S. The Dems know this but want to play political games. Must finally be done correctly. No Cave!”
The impact of the government’s longest-ever shutdown continues to ripple across the nation. The longest previous shutdown was 21 days in 1995-96, when Bill Clinton was president.
The Transportation Security Administration said the percentage of its airport screeners missing work hit 10 percent on Sunday, up from 3.1 percent on the comparable Sunday a year ago.
The screeners, who have been working without pay, have been citing financial hardship as the reason they can’t report to work. Even so, the agency said it screened 1.78 million passengers Sunday with only 6.9 percent having to wait 15 minutes or longer to get through security.
Asked in an interview on “Fox News Sunday” whether Trump’s Saturday proposal represented a “final offer,” Vice President Mike Pence said the White House was willing to negotiate.
“Well, of course,” Pence said. “The legislative process is a negotiation.”
When gunmakers and dealers gather this week in Las Vegas for the industry’s largest annual conference, they will be grappling with slumping sales and a shift in politics that many didn’t envision two years ago when gun-friendly Donald Trump and a GOP-controlled Congress took office.
Some of the top priorities for the industry — expanding the reach of concealed carry permits and easing restrictions on so-called “silencers” — remain in limbo, and prospects for expanding gun rights are nil for the foreseeable future.Instead, fueled by the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, the federal government banned bump stocks and newly in-charge U.S. House Democrats introduced legislation that would require background checks for virtually every firearm sale, regardless of whether it’s from a gun dealer or a private sale.
Even without Democrats’ gains in November’s midterm elections, the industry was facing a so-called “Trump slump,” a plummet in sales that happens amid gun rights-friendly administrations. Background checks were at an all-time high in 2016, President Barack Obama’s last full year in office, numbering more than 27.5 million; since then, background checks have been at about 25 million each year.
Gary Ramey, owner of Georgian gunmaker Honor Defense, says the mood at last year’s SHOT Show, which stands for Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade, was subdued. He’s expecting the same this year.
“There was no one to beat up. You didn’t have President Obama to put up in PowerPoint and say ‘He’s the best gun salesman, look what he’s doing to our country,'” he said.
“Numbers are down,” he added. “You can’t deny it.”
Robert J. Spitzer, chairman of political science at the State University of New York at Cortland and a longtime watcher of gun issues, said that not only have shifting politics made it difficult for the gun industry to gain ground but high-profile mass shootings — like the Las Vegas shooting that happened just miles from where the SHOT Show will be held and the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting — also cast a pall.
“After the Parkland shooting, (gun rights’ initiatives) were kind of frozen in their tracks,” Spitzer said. “Now there’s no chance that it’s going anywhere.”
It’s easier to drive up gun sales when there’s the threat or risk of gun-rights being restricted, he said. “It’s harder to rally people when your target is one house of Congress. It just doesn’t have the same galvanizing effect.”
The National Shooting Sports Foundation’s SHOT Show has been held annually for more than four decades. This year more than 60,000 will attend the event that runs Tuesday through Friday — from gun dealers and manufacturers to companies that cater to law enforcement. There’s a wait list for exhibitors that is several hundred names long and it will have some 13 miles of aisles featuring products from more than 1,700 companies.
Last year’s show in Las Vegas was held just months after a gunman killed 58 people and injured hundreds at an outdoor music festival. The massacre was carried out by a gunman armed with bump stocks, which allow the long guns to mimic fully automatic weapons.
Organizers last year restricted media access to trade journalists. This year’s show will again allow reporters from mainstream media to attend.
Gun-control advocates are rejoicing in the gun industry’s misfortunes of late and chalking it up to not just shifting attitudes among Americans but a shift in elected political leaders.
“Without a fake menace in the White House to gin up fears, gun sales have been in a Trump slump and, as a result, the NRA is on the rocks,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a group founded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Joe Bartozzi, the new president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said the industry isn’t disturbed by the drop in gun sales or the shift in federal politics. While Democrats who ran on gun-control platforms made huge gains in the House, he sees the Senate shifting to the other end of the spectrum.
“Having been in the industry for over 30 years and seeing the trends of gun sales ebb and flow over time, it’s very hard to put your finger on any one specific issue as to why this happens. It’s just the cyclical nature of the business,” he said.
Trump’s campaign was bolstered by about $30 million from the National Rifle Association and when he took office, the industry had hoped that a host of gun rights would be enacted. The Trump administration quickly nixed an Obama-imposed rule that made it more difficult for some disabled people to purchase and possess firearms.
But other industry priorities, such as reciprocity between states for carrying certain concealed firearms and a measure that would ease restrictions on purchasing suppressors that help muffle the sound when a gun is fired, failed to gain traction.
For now, Bartozzi said his organization is focused on a measure that would expand public gun ranges, funded by an existing tax on firearms and ammunition sales that supports conservation, safety programs and shooting ranges on public lands. The hope is that increasing the number of public ranges will encourage more people to become hunters.
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Recreational use of marijuana is illegal in Missouri, but for about one-third of the state’s residents, it’s a crime prosecutors won’t pursue.
Over the past seven months, prosecutors in St. Louis city, Jackson County and most recently St. Louis County have all announced they will no longer prosecute most low-level marijuana possession cases.
Missouri’s urban areas join a growing list of places across the U.S. where similar policies have been adopted. They include the Manhattan and Brooklyn boroughs in New York City, Philadelphia, and smaller places like Albany, New York, and Norfolk Commonwealth, Virginia.
A day after taking office this month, St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell announced the policy change. St. Louis city Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner in June and Jackson County prosecuting attorney Jean Peters Baker in November preceded Bell. About 2.1 million of Missouri’s 6.1 million residents live in those jurisdictions.
The policy changes have exceptions. Those suspected of selling or distributing marijuana will still be charged, as will motorists accused of driving while impaired by the drug.
Erik Altieri, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said he expects additional communities across the U.S. to follow suit “as more and more Americans are demanding that we replace our policies of incarceration and prohibition with legalization and regulation.”
Once seen as a “gateway drug” that lured users to harder and more dangerous experimentation, the nation has seen a growing acceptance of marijuana, in part for its medicinal use. Missouri voters approved medical marijuana in November, joining 32 other states. Recreational use is legal in 10 states.
Some Missouri lawmakers say prosecutors shouldn’t be picking and choosing which laws to pursue or ignore.
“It’s the legislative branch who draws up the laws of Missouri,” Republican Rep. Jim Murphy of south St. Louis County said. “The courts interpret them and the prosecutors and law enforcement enforce the law.”
Republican Sen. Bob Onder of Lake St. Louis agreed, calling the prosecutors’ decisions “a subversion of our democratic process.”
Onder, a physician, also cited concerns about marijuana’s health impact on young users.
Bell said his office needs to focus on violent and serious crimes. He noted that in the past, an assistant prosecutor might spend up to 60 hours working on a single marijuana possession case.
“When I think of keeping my family safe, the person smoking a small amount of marijuana is not what I’m worried about,” Bell said.
He also believes the new policy benefits those caught with the drug. People with addiction problems will be directed to treatment, he said. Others will avoid the stigma of incarceration, which can cost them their jobs.
“I don’t think anyone should see the inside of a jail cell for a small amount of marijuana,” Bell said.
Baker was unavailable for comment, her spokesman said. Messages seeking comment from Gardner were not returned.
Bell pulled off a shocking win in the August Democratic primary against 28-year incumbent Bob McCulloch, and ran unopposed in November. Before that he was a city councilman in Ferguson, elected months after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown that set off months of protests.
Bell was sworn in Jan. 1 and announced sweeping policy changes a day later, including the new marijuana policy.
Marijuana remains illegal in the eyes of the federal government. Those caught transporting marijuana across state lines can face federal prosecution.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — The Boone County Sheriff’s Department says a man is in custody after he made a bomb threat at a truck stop in central Missouri.
The sheriff’s department said in a news release that officers were called to the Midway Travel Plaza west of Columbia early Monday after a man refused to leave after he allegedly tried to start a fire.
The release says the man allegedly told a dispatcher that he had a bomb in a backpack and would be waiting for deputies to arrive.
When deputies arrived, the man refused to follow their orders to walk away from the backpack. Deputies shot the man with a beanbag and he was taken to a local hospital.
The Columbia Fire Department Bomb Squad determined the backpack did not contain a bomb.
HOLTS SUMMIT, Mo. (AP) — Fire officials say no one was injured when a fire destroyed an apartment complex in central Missouri.
Fire crews on the scene early Monday -photo courtesy KMIZ TV
The Evergreen Condos in Holts Summit were fully engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived early Monday.
Holts Summit fire Lt. Scott Palsey said the complex included about 30 units. He said everyone evacuated immediately and all residents were accounted for after the fire.
Palsey said the fire was challenging because of high winds, cold temperatures and the number of people living in the complex.
JACKSON COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a series of burglaries and have suspects in custody.
Trevor James Hurteau-photo Jackson Co. SheriffChristopher Lee McGee-photo Jackson Co. Sheriff
Sunday night, Jackson County Sheriff’s Deputies served a search warrant at a residence located at 307 Highland Avenue in Denison, according to sheriff Tim Morse.
Deputies seized property believed to have been taken in the three burglaries including a Sunday morning burglary to the Muleskinner Lodge, 10910 W. Road in Denison.
The lodge in recent years had been operated as a bed and breakfast facility. Trevor James Hurteau, 18, and Christopher Lee McGee, 18, and a 15-year-old boy, all of Denison were arrested on burglary, theft, criminal damage to property and trespassing charges, according to Morse.
The trio allegedly broke into the lodge after 1:30 am Sunday morning and removed property from the premises. Hurteau and the 15-year-old allegedly committed two additional burglaries, thefts, trespassed and damaged property at the same location between November to mid-December of 2018.
Hurteau and McGee are currently being held in the Jackson County Jail. The juvenile is being held in a juvenile detention facility. All three subjects are awaiting bond at this time.
The volume of non-real estate farm debt continued to increase in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to the Federal Reserve’s Agricultural Finance Databook. Total non-real estate farm loans were up nearly eight percent from a year ago, which was the seventh consecutive quarter of annual growth in loan volumes.
