TOPEKA— Law enforcement authorities are investigating a Kansas man sought by the U.S. Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force on a felony Shawnee County warrant for charges of Aggravated Battery and Criminal possession of a firearm.

Those charges stem from a shooting incident that occurred on April 30, in the 2200 block of SE Turnpike Avenue in Topeka, according the U.S. Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force.  On Thursday, member of the task force apprehended 35-year-old Mario O’Neal Sr.

He is accused of shooting the victim multiple times over a dispute about mechanical repairs on his vehicle.

The Fugitive Task Force had been searching for O’Neal for several days when their investigation led them to an apartment complex in the 3700 block of SW Park South Court in Topeka.

A search warrant for O’Neal was served by the task force at one of the apartments in the complex and O’Neal was located and arrested on the warrants. He was subsequently booked into the Shawnee County jail on the charges and is awaiting further court proceedings

The Fugitive Task Force is comprised of various law enforcement agencies to include the United States Marshals Service, ICE, the Kansas Department of Corrections, and the Topeka Police Department.

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Documents show the city of Columbia settled a claim with the family of a 4-year-old girl who was struck and killed by a police vehicle for just under $3.4 million.

Documents released Friday show the parents of Gabriella Curry will each receive about $1.1 million and funeral expenses, with the remainder going to attorneys.

Gabriella Curry died Jan. 4 when a police vehicle driven by officer Andrea Heese struck her outside of Battle High School in Columbia.

Heese was driving in the school bus loading area at Battle and drove onto the sidewalk, striking Curry, according to initial reports from the Missouri Highway Patrol.

The patrol is investigating the incident. Heese, a five-year veteran of the department, is on administrative leave pending the investigation.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas is reporting that its unemployment rate remained at 3.5% in April and that the number of private sector jobs grew slightly over the previous year.

The state Department of Labor is reporting that the seasonally adjusted April unemployment rate was slightly higher than the 3.4% rate in April 2018. The state’s unemployment rate has remained below 4% for more than two years.

The department also says that the number of private-sector, nonfarm jobs was 10,500 higher than it was in April 2018, exceeding 1.16 million. The growth was 0.9%.

Construction experienced the biggest gain, 3.6%.

The state also added 5,600 private-sector nonfarm jobs from March to April, for growth of 0.5%.

Only 10 of the state’s 105 counties had unemployment rates above 4 percent in April.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri lawmakers are renewing a truce offer with Kansas in a long-running battle over businesses in the Kansas City area.

Legislation given final approval Friday would prohibit Missouri tax incentives from being used to lure businesses from the Kansas side of Kansas City to move across the state line. But it would take effect only if Kansas adopts a similar policy within the next two years.

Missouri passed a similar measure in 2014, but Kansas never agreed, and the offer expired in 2016.

Since then, both states have continued to battle for businesses in the Kansas City area.

The Missouri bill now goes to Gov. Mike Parson. It would apply to businesses in Cass, Clay, Jackson and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson, Miami and Wyandotte counties in Kansas.

TOPEKA— Law enforcement authorities are investigating a shooting and have made an arrest.

Just after 2p.m. Tuesday, police responded to a local hospital on the report of a male victim arriving with a gunshot wound.  Upon arrival, officers discovered the incident occurred in the area of the 3100 Block of SE Pisces in Topeka, according to Lt. Jerry Monasmith. The victim appeared to have non-life threating injuries.

On Friday, following an  investigation police identified a suspect as 44-year-old Shaun Hightower. On May Just after 12:31 p.m. officers observed  Hightower in a local convenience store, and later located him in the 2100 Block of NW Lower Silver Lake Road, according to Monasmith. Police took him into custody without incident on requested charges of Aggravated Battery and transported to the Shawnee County Department of Corrections.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri school children could get an additional August weekend at home under legislation given final approval.

A bill passed Friday would push back the start date for public schools by an extra four days. State law currently says schools can start no sooner than 10 days before the first Monday in September. The bill would change that to 14 days.

State law currently has an exception for schools to start earlier if the school board gives notice and holds a public meeting before voting to do so.

Supporters say the later start dates could help the economy by providing an extra weekend for tourists to take summer vacations.

The legislation now goes to Gov. Mike Parson.

By NOMIN UJIYEDIIN

When it comes to marijuana, Kansas is a red state in an increasingly green country.

Three of its neighbors — Colorado, Oklahoma and Missouri — have legalized some form of the drug in recent years. Yet Kansas remains one of four states in the country without a comprehensive medical or recreational marijuana program.

That’s not for lack of trying. This spring, the Legislature passed a bill allowing patients and caregivers to possess CBD — one chemical in marijuana — containing small amounts of THC, a psychoactive component of the plant. The Kansas Health Institute reports that lawmakers have introduced 18 medical marijuana bills since 2006. This year, one got a hearing at the Capitol.

But law enforcement officers representing several of the state’s agencies and professional organizations testified against it. The bill never made it to a vote.

“I only ask that you give deference to the experience, to the opinions of the law enforcement community,” said Kirk Thompson, director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, the top law enforcement agency in the state. “We’ve seen the negative side of this issue.”

The agency denied requests for an interview with Thompson and didn’t answer emailed questions about its marijuana enforcement strategy. But Thompson’s statement echoes the position of many of the state’s law enforcement agencies and organizations.

They argue that even legalization of medical marijuana would increase car accidents and violent crime and make it easier for foreign drug cartels to move weed onto the black market.

Law enforcement officers say weed is inherently tied to violence, especially from Mexican cartels. And they report an increase in marijuana-related traffic stops in Kansas, especially since Colorado legalized recreational sales of the drug in 2014.

“In every way, marijuana is driving up public health and public safety concerns,” said Jeffrey Stamm, executive director of the Kansas City-based Midwest High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, under the Office of National Drug Control Policy. “In terms of the psychopharmacology, the economic, the criminal, the social costs of marijuana use, cops, in fact, are the experts.”

But ultimately, it’s hard to know what impact marijuana has on public safety in Kansas because the state doesn’t collect much of that information.

Anecdotes and Statistics

The federal Drug Enforcement Administration publishes data on its Cannabis Eradication Program, including arrests, number of plants seized and the value of assets seized in each state.

But the Kansas Bureau of Investigation doesn’t do the same.

KBI says in 2018, more 45% of its crime lab’s blood drug tests came back positive for THC. In 2013, only 29% of those blood tests indicated the presence of THC. But the agency doesn’t track the total number of marijuana seizures in the state, nor does it track the total number of marijuana arrests.

In an email, a spokeswoman said the agency’s statewide crime reporting system was “extremely outdated,” deriving statistics from police reports that don’t distinguish which specific drugs were involved in an incident.

The agency also doesn’t track the origin of marijuana seizures in Kansas — whether the drugs came from inside the state, from another U.S. state such as Colorado or California, or from an international source like a Mexican cartel.

A 2016 survey of law enforcement agencies conducted by the Kansas Attorney General’s office found that it’s hard for police to conclusively find out where drugs are from. They rely on statements from suspects, receipts,  labels on packages, or stops near Kansas’ western border to determine whether marijuana comes from pot-friendly Colorado.

Some survey respondents said they had made an increasing number of arrests for DUIs and people carrying marijuana products, especially edibles, since 2014. Others, however, noted no increase or said sample sizes were too small to tell.

Kansas Highway Patrol Lt. Chris Bauer, who teaches officers to recognize whether drivers have been using drugs, said the patrol has noticed an increase in drivers being impaired by marijuana. The Highway Patrol says 62% of lab tests of impaired drivers in 2018 came back positive for THC. Two years earlier, 54% of labs found traces of the drug. Yet those tests aren’t always a reliable indicator of how recently someone used cannabis.

In a phone interview, Bauer said he believes the increase is a result of “society’s changing attitude toward cannabis, and then also the fact that we’re surrounded by states who now have legalized it.”

In 2018, the Kansas Highway Patrol confiscated 13,029 pounds of marijuana in 322 seizures.  In 2017, the agency made 399 seizures and confiscated 7,488 pounds.

Bauer said many troopers have begun getting rid of small amounts of marijuana by the side of the road during traffic stops, rather than arresting and charging everyone for possession. Those stops don’t get recorded.

“Maybe we don’t want to take everybody to jail for a small amount of marijuana,” Bauer said. “Jails are full. We sort of have to triage what we’re doing.”

Kansas Department of Transportation data shows that drug-related traffic collisions have remained at about 0.5% of all accidents over the past decade, but the agency does not collect information on specific drugs.

‘Arrows in Their Quiver’

State Sen. David Haley, a former prosecutor who co-sponsored the medical marijuana bill in the Kansas Senate this year, said the state has a strong law enforcement lobby. He thinks officers want to keep marijuana illegal as a pretext to stop and search people.

“I think law enforcement wants to keep as many arrows, if you will, in their quiver,” he said. “I can’t think of any other reason that their lobby has been so adamant.”

Brian Leininger, another former prosecutor who now works as a defense attorney in DUI cases, agrees.

“Police and other government officials have a lot of social capital,” he said. “They want the status quo. They make their living enforcing the drug laws.”

For about five years, Leininger served as the general counsel for the Kansas Highway Patrol. As a private defense attorney, he still speaks with police regularly and says officers often tell him they oppose the state’s marijuana laws but don’t think they can speak out publicly.

“All the time, officers tell me and other people that ‘it’s really foolish this is illegal. I wish they’d just make it legal. It would make my job easier,’” Leininger said. “‘Alcoholics are violent and dangerous and bad drivers. People under the influence of marijuana are generally calm.’”

He thinks attitudes will change as older officers start retiring and societal attitudes continue to change.

“As the officers get younger, a higher and higher percentage of them grew up with marijuana,” he said. “Eventually, when 45 of the other states have legalized it entirely, maybe Kansas will come around.”

Nomin Ujiyediin reports out of Topeka for the Kansas News Service. You can reach her on @NominUJ

EFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri lawmakers approved a measure Friday that could authorize $301 million in bonds to repair 215 bridges across the state, allowing Gov. Mike Parson to make good on one of his top priorities just hours before wrapping up their annual session.

The final version, however, was not exactly how the Republican governor had outlined it at the start of the session.

The resolution would authorize the bonds only if Missouri wins a federal grant intended to help replace an Interstate 70 bridge over the Missouri River west of Columbia.

The measure also is smaller than the $350 million bond proposal initially outlined by Parson, which would have repaired 250 bridges. Lawmakers reduced the bond costs by instead putting $50 million of general revenue into next year’s budget to help fix the other 35 bridges.

The bonds would be repaid over seven years with general state revenues, not dedicated road funds, beginning after July 1, 2020.

The House gave final approval to the measure 107-31 on Friday.

Parson said he looked forward to signing the legislation, calling it “a substantial first step to meeting our state’s infrastructure needs.”

It “effects almost every region in the state of Missouri — it doesn’t matter if it’s an urban area, rural area, it’s going to have an effect on everybody,” Parson said.

When the measure passed the Senate last month, Parson said he would have preferred not to tie the fate of the bridge repairs to a federal grant decision on the I-70 Missouri River bridge. But he nonetheless thanked lawmakers for reaching a deal.

Parson put forth the bridge bonding plan in January after voters last November defeated a gradual 10-cent a gallon fuel tax increase that would have raised $288 million annually for state highways and $123 million for city and county roads when fully implemented.

Neither the fuel tax hike nor the bonding plan would address all of Missouri’s transportation needs. The Missouri Department of Transportation has said there is a $745 million annual funding gap in state road and bridge needs.

“This is just a Band-Aid,” said Republican Rep. Glen Kolkmeyer, of Odessa. “This is not the solution. This is not the end game.”

Transportation Department Director Patrick McKenna nonetheless described the measure as “a significant investment package in Missouri’s future.” He said some bridges would be under contract to replace or repair by the end of the year.

The bridges slated to be funded by the bonds already are in the transportation department’s short-term repair plan. By directing bond money toward the bridges, the department could free up money to go toward additional road and bridge projects.

JOHNSON COUNTY —A 1991 Mustang 5.0 stolen in Kansas back in October 1993 has been recovered. Captain Fredrickson, who took the report as a patrolman got the call Thursday, according to a social media report form Overland Park Police Chief Frank Donchez.

A 1991 Mustang 5.0 stolen in OP back in October 1993 has been recovered! Captain Fredrickson, who took the report as a patrolman, got the call today. It was recovered in a Missouri barn and identified by the @MSHPTrooperGHQ. See the attached report and replica photo. pic.twitter.com/0pPlRWluwC

— Frank Donchez (@OPPD_Chief) May 16, 2019

The car was recovered in a Missouri barn and identified by the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

By JOHN HANNA Associated Press

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Abused and neglected children are again sleeping overnight in the offices of Kansas foster care contractors because homes cannot be found for them quickly enough.

Since January, when Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly took office, more than 70 children have been kept overnight in the offices of the two nonprofit agencies providing foster care services. Her Republican predecessor’s administration kept children from sleeping in offices during its final months after threatening publicly to fine contractors — a threat Kelly’s administration has dropped.

The state Department for Children and Families provided statistics in response to questions from The Associated Press after it received a tip that the practice had returned. Kelly, legislators and child welfare advocates have repeatedly cited the practice as a sign of serious problems in the child welfare system since it came to lightin 2017.

“We need to build capacity to make sure that we’re able to find stable placements with family or with licensed foster homes or in the right facility for every youth,” DCF Deputy Secretary Tanya Keys said during an interview. “So, one is too many.”

Kelly, a state senator before being elected governor last year, was a vocal critic of fiscal and social services policies under former Republican Govs. Sam Brownback and Jeff Colyer. She said during her campaign last year that fixing the troubled child welfare system was a top priority and told The AP in February, “These kids are ultimately in my charge.”

“She is aware of the problem,” spokeswoman Ashely All said, adding that the governor receives frequent briefings on child welfare issues. “She is working with the (DCF) secretary to address it quickly.”

The department’s statistics showed that four children were kept overnight in the offices of its two foster care contractors, KVC Health Systems and St. Francis Ministries, in January and February. The figure jumped to 12 in March and 35 in April and was 16 for the first 11 days of May.

The department said no children were kept overnight in contractors’ offices in October, November and December 2018. Colyer, who became governor when Brownback resigned to take an U.S. ambassador’s post in January 2018, cited it as an accomplishmentfor his short administration as he left office.

DCF officials said children began staying overnight in offices again partly because bad winter weather made it less safe to move them. Keys said some children have behavioral problems that make it problematic to put them with other children, so that it’s harder to find homes for them. Others simply have been taken into state custody late in the day, she said.

Also, DCF officials said, the number has tended to spike during April and May, though they could not pinpoint why.

The return to having foster children stay overnight in offices received little public attention since Kelly became governor.

“It doesn’t matter if there’s a Republican in office or if there is a Democrat in office,” said state Sen. Richard Hilderbrand, a Republican from southeast Kansas who’s been monitoring child welfare statistics for weeks. “The kids are the kids. That doesn’t change, and that’s who we’re supposed to take care of.”

The number of foster children sleeping in offices this spring is less than the 85 in April 2018 and 69 in May 2018. The number dropped sharply after that, to four in July 2018.

“We are making progress, but we continue to work on long-term solutions,” All said, citing those numbers. “This continues to be a priority for the governor.”

The problem received fresh attention in September 2018, when the number rose to 14 and an 18-year-old man was criminally charged with sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girlwho had stayed overnight in a contractor’s suburban Kansas City office months before. Kelly called the case a “nightmare.”

Colyer’s DCF secretary, Gina Meier-Hummel, announced plans in September 2018 to fine contractors if foster children slept overnight in their offices, just before the number fell to zero for three months.

“What’s cause the change is backing off the contractors being fined if they don’t address the issue,” said state Sen. Molly Baumgardner, a Kansas City-area Republican, adding that having children sleep in offices again is “very troubling.”

DCF’s current spokesman, Mike Deines, said the agency is forgoing fines to concentrate on “the underlying cause.”

Keys said the department is working to recruit new foster parents to add to the state’s 2,000 or so licensed foster homes and to find relatives for children more quickly. The state had about 7,600 children in its foster care system in April — 46 percent more than 10 years ago.

“We don’t have any evidence that there were any fines levied,” Deines said.

The practice came to light during a September 2017 meeting of a task force created by the Legislature to investigate problems in the child welfare system. Kelly said at the time that it had probably been happening for some time and that she’d rather have children safe in caseworkers’ offices than “dumped off somewhere.”

“It will always be an issue if we don’t keep on top of it,” Hilderbrand said.