#Kansas City Police Department

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Kansas City, Missouri is now a “sanctuary city” for trans people following a 12-1 vote by the Kansas City Council to declare itself one. The move comes in response to the state’s Republican-led legislature passing two bills aimed at limiting the rights of transgender Missourians.

As the Associated Press reports, on Wednesday, Republican lawmakers sent two bills to Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R). One would ban gender-affirming healthcare like puberty blockers and hormone therapy for trans youth as well as some adults. The other bans trans athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports at all grade levels and in college at both private and public schools. Parson is expected to sign both bills.

In response, the Kansas City Council on Thursday voted 12 to 1 to approve a resolution to declare the city a sanctuary for people seeking or providing gender-affirming care. As a result, city officials will not prosecute or fine individuals or organizations under the state’s new anti-trans laws. City staff are also instructed to make enforcing the ban on gender-affirming care “their lowest priority.” The Kansas City Police Department has also been encouraged to adopt a similar policy, The Los Angeles Blade reports.

“Kansas City government is committed to ensuring Kansas City is a welcoming, inclusive, and safe place for everyone, including our transgender and LGBTQ+ community. After the Missouri state legislature introduced several bills criminalizing access to gender-affirming healthcare across Missouri, I am proud City Council took action and approved the ‘safe haven’ resolution to take steps, within our legal power, to protect our transgender community and anyone seeking gender-affirming care,” Mayor Quinton Lucas (D) said. “For decades, Kansas City has been at the forefront of our region, ensuring we have equality for all, and we will continue to do everything in our power to fight for equal rights for all in our city, no matter what happens at our state capitol.”

Councilwoman Andrea Bough, the resolution’s sponsor, said that the measure was a reiteration of Kansas City’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.

“As a woman and a mother, I strongly feel that personal health care decisions should be reserved for individuals, families, and their physicians without influence from politicians,” Bough said. “Public service should be about helping the community not harming individuals. Today we are proclaiming to our transgender and LGBTQ community that you are safe with us.”

The city’s LGBTQ Commission previously sent a letter to city council members urging them to pass legislation to make Kansas City a “safe haven” for transgender people, following an “emergency regulation” issued by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) in April to severely restrict access to gender-affirming healthcare in the state.

The rule would require both minors and adults in Missouri to receive 15 hourly sessions with a therapist over at least 18 months before receiving gender-affirming care such as hormone therapy or puberty blockers. They would also have to be screened for autism and “social media addiction,” and any mental health issues would have to be treated and resolved before they would be eligible for treatment for gender dysphoria.

Critics described the move as a “power grab” by Bailey, who is campaigning for reelection. A Missouri judge temporarily blocked the rule late last month.

[goodsentence]

The department’s statement more or less states that if they do not have a missing persons report in their database on someone, that there is zero possibility that the person might be missing – or at the very least, that they have no interest in helping find them. Their statement [...] makes clear that community concerns and testimonies mean nothing to them, even after such concerns are proven true, if they are not formally filed and accepted by the department’s missing persons unit. It is difficult to interpret the department’s unwillingness to admit it was wrong and to work with the community to search for any additional victims as anything other than an attempt to protect their credibility rather than the safety of the community. How many more people have to go missing or be killed before the department admits it does not have a monopoly on public safety information and that the testimonies of folks in our communities are not “rumors” but important sources of information?

KC Defender Staff 14 OCtober 2022 "KCPD Said Missing Black Women Reports In KC Were 'Completely Unfounded.' Less Than A Month Later, One Escaped After Being Kidnapped From Prospect & Tortured in a Basement For Over A Month" The Kansas City Defender

[yaoiboypussy]

Kita Bee, a black trans woman, was killed in a hit-and-run in Kansas City on May 3rd. She was hit twice by two drivers, both of which fled the scene. Investigation into her death are still ongoing.

The KCPD misgendered her in their original announcement of death.

https://www.them.us/story/kita-bee-kansas-city-black-trans-icon-killed

[theusarticles]

Toddler among 4 recent victims of deadly fentanyl overdoses in Kansas City

Toddler among 4 recent victims of deadly fentanyl overdoses in Kansas City

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In a two-week period this month, Kansas City, Missouri, police say they have investigated the deaths of four people – including a toddler – caused by fentanyl overdoses. Police took to social media Wednesday afternoon outlining the number of cases, describing the crisis as “getting worse.” In addition to the four deaths, police say they have been called to other deadly…

[socialjusticeinamerica]

“Missouri has some of the most open, liberal gun laws in the country. Anyone can carry a long gun, anywhere. Police departments in urban areas are challenged by the laws, because they limit what law enforcement officers can do if they see citizens carrying weapons of war openly on the streets of cities like St. Louis and Kansas City.

Meanwhile, the Missouri state Legislature has been dominated by rural leaders — Republican leaders who think guns are OK because they are thinking of them solely in a rural context, and not about what happens when you mix gun violence with a densely concentrated urban area. The damage these weapons can do, especially long guns that can be fired rapidly, is catastrophic.

Today, we have witnessed another sad chapter in America’s love affair with weapons designed to kill and maim a lot of humans in a short amount of time.”

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

The family of a 16-year-old boy shot twice in the head by a white man last week has labeled the act a hate crime after saying the teenager was just trying to pick up his younger siblings from a friend’s house. The boy, Ralph Yarl, “mistakenly went to the wrong house” in a Kansas City neighborhood on Thursday, according to a GoFundMe set up by his aunt to handle medical expenses.Yarl pulled up the driveway and rang the doorbell. “The man in the home opened the door, looked my nephew in the eye, and shot him in the head,” his aunt, Faith Spoonmore, wrote. “My nephew fell to the ground, and the man shot him again.” Still conscious, Yarl ran for help, but Spoonmore alleged that he “had to run to 3 different homes” before someone came to his aid, and then only after ordering the 16-year-old to lie on the ground with his hands up. He was hospitalized, but “has a long road ahead mentally and emotionally,” the fundraiser page reads. The alleged gunman, who has not been identified, was taken into custody and brought to a police station to give a statement. Placed on a 24-hour hold, he was released pending further investigation, something the chief of the Kansas City Police Department spent much of a short Sunday press conference justifying

This asshole shot a kid twice in the head and was released into the public.

[chosetherose]

*WSJ Link*

There Are Plenty of Power Publicists. But Only One Works for Taylor Swift.

By Allie Jones

April 18, 2024 at 8:00 am ET

Taylor Swift was celebrating the end of the Australian leg of her Eras Tour in late February when a bit of unpleasantness sailed out from Down Under and landed on the home page of TMZ. The New South Wales Police Force was investigating a 71-year-old man for allegedly assaulting a 51-year-old man at a wharf north of the city, according to their media unit. Per TMZ, the septuagenarian was Scott Swift, Taylor’s father and a key member of her management team, and the younger man was a photographer. 

The story had all the makings of a public relations nightmare: (1) Celebrity family member allegedly behaves badly while (2) disembarking from a luxury yacht, resulting in (3) a police investigation. To make matters more complicated, Taylor was reportedly present for the alleged altercation—hiding under an umbrella, TMZ said. Though the man didn’t require medical treatment, the police said, there was video footage. Would this be the end of the pop star’s marathon run of fawning press? 

Not if Tree Paine could help it. 

Swift’s longtime publicist first released a statement that did not refute TMZ’s story, exactly, but offered some exculpatory evidence: “Two individuals were aggressively pushing their way towards Taylor, grabbing at her security personnel, and threatening to throw a female staff member into the water.” Subtext: Scott Swift was simply protecting his daughter and another defenseless woman from a couple of rogue aggressors. He was not charged. 

Around the same time, as if by magic, People found a video of Scott passing out sandwiches to young female fans at one of the Sydney shows and published it along with fan commentary. “Isn’t he the sweetest and cutest,” one cooed.

Online, Swifties clocked the People story as good old-fashioned damage control. As a chorus of fan posts put it: “The devil works hard, but Tree Paine works harder.” (In late March, the New South Wales Police Force media unit said that the North Shore Police Area Command finished its investigation and that it is taking no further action.)

The public often sees Paine expertly attending to Swift’s needs, from smoothing out Swift’s red carpet dresses to leading her past scrums of paparazzi.

The average celebrity publicist does not have fans. But Paine, the 52-year-old redhead seen trailing Swift at awards shows and rubbing shoulders with Gayle King in the Eras Tour VIP area, has become a Swiftverse cult figure in her own right. Fans post reverently about her PR machinations and share videos of her expertly attending to Swift’s needs: smoothing out Swift’s dress on the red carpet, leading Swift right past a scrum of reporters whose questions have not been approved, subtly offering Swift what appeared to be water at the Video Music Awards—a night when the star was filmed dancing in a manner that suggested inebriation.

Swift has trained her followers to look for meaning in her every gesture, outfit and Instagram caption. Paine’s own work—the stories she chooses to respond to, the narrative she puts forward in the media—has become part of that lore. 

And Swift and Paine are creating a lot of lore lately. Swift spent the fall cheering on her new boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, as he sailed to Super Bowl victory, and dropped by the Grammys to pick up album of the year for Midnights and announce her new album in an acceptance speech for yet another award. The Tortured Poets Department, which fans speculate is at least partly inspired by her breakup with the British actor Joe Alwyn, drops this month, and Swift will promote it while balancing her public relationship, continuing her sold-out international Eras Tour amid growing criticism of her private jet usage and brushing off baseless conspiracy theories that she is secretly working as a Democratic operative to swing the 2024 election for President Joe Biden. 

In a long career of riding high, Swift has hit the stratosphere. It’s Paine’s job to keep her there. 

Back in 2014, Swift’s world domination was not yet assured. That March, trade publications reported that the pop star’s publicist of seven years, Paula Erickson, had submitted her resignation. Fairly or not, during Erickson’s tenure, Swift developed a reputation for being both boy-crazy and unwilling to joke about it. See: Swift’s string of high-profile relationships with Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, Jake Gyllenhaal and Harry Styles; her alleged wedding-crashing with Conor Kennedy; her humorless response to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s joke at the 2013 Golden Globes about her dating life. (“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women,” she told Vanity Fair when asked about the incident.) Erickson declined to comment for this story.

Paine, who had been working as the senior vice president of publicity in the Christian and Country divisions of Warner Music Nashville, came on board and quickly flipped the script. She launched her own firm, Premium PR, and signed Swift as her first and only client. “There isn’t a publicist in NY, LA or Nashville that wouldn’t jump at an opportunity to work with someone as talented as Taylor Swift and her management team,” Paine told Page Six at the time. 

That year, Swift moved from Nashville to New York, went full pop with the release of 1989 and began flaunting her friendships with a gaggle of famous women, known colloquially as The Squad. The public started to forget about the time Swift, age 22, allegedly bought a house across the street from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. 

Now that Swift has hit the stratosphere, it’s Paine’s job to keep her there. 

Throughout this transformation, Paine refused to let rumors about her client fester. The very week her hiring was announced, she began issuing public rebuttals to the tabloids. “Never believe the National Enquirer,” she tweeted about an apparently false story that Swift declined to record a duet with Randy Travis. Ten years later, the gossip about Swift has changed, but Paine’s approach has not: She recently called out the anonymous gossip account Deuxmoi for causing “pain and trauma” by posting false rumors about Swift secretly marrying Alwyn before the two broke up. 

Paine became even more visible to fans in 2020, when she appeared in Swift’s Netflix documentary Miss Americana. Wearing white shorts and blue nail polish, she clinked white-wine glasses with Swift as the singer-songwriter anxiously prepared to post her first political statement on Instagram. Swifties have since turned Paine into something of a meme: Online, they joke that Swift’s “Out of the Woods” lyric “the monsters turned out to be just trees” is a reference to the publicist and that a redheaded Eras Tour backup dancer is Tree-coded. They have decided that in the inevitable Paine biopic, the publicist will be played by Amy Adams, and that she will win her first Oscar for it. 

The fan obsession has been fueled, in part, by how little Paine has shared publicly about herself. Her Instagram is private. The last time she sat for an interview was 2012, when she was a VP at Warner and appeared in Nashville Lifestyles’ “Most Beautiful People” issue; she posed for a photo in front of a shiplap-covered wall wearing a peasant blouse and made the astonishing revelation that she was “trying to enjoy life.” I cannot report whether that is still true; Paine declined to be interviewed for this story. 

Born Trina Snyder, Paine grew up in Costa Mesa, California. She was still going by Trina when she was initiated into Pi Beta Phi at the University of Southern California in 1990, according to the women’s fraternity’s official publication, The Arrow. 

Like her client, Paine is a Nashville transplant. In her early career, she worked her way up at a variety of L.A. record labels—World Domination, Maverick and Interscope, whose roster included Snoop Dogg, No Doubt, Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson. She launched her own guerrilla-marketing company, worked for the Academy of Country Music and eventually joined Warner Music in Tennessee. 

In 1998, she married Lance Paine, a businessman and onetime president of the Nashville candy brand Goo Goo Cluster, in Las Vegas, according to public records. (Lance also served as president of the company owned by HGTV’s Property Brothers.) The Paines have one teenage daughter, and according to the society pages, they have spent some nights mixing with locals at Nashville charity galas. 

Paine has built a fearsome reputation in media circles, closely guarding access to Swift.

But mostly, Paine works. She has built a fearsome reputation in media circles, closely guarding access to Swift and sending emails to journalists with surprising velocity whenever she disagrees with a story. “Once I started working in media, I would always hear about people getting emails from Tree Paine, or maybe, people being afraid of getting emails from Tree Paine,” says Hunter Harris, a self-described “Painiac” and the writer of the entertainment newsletter Hung Up, which regularly chronicles Paine’s engagement with the press. (Harris has also contributed to WSJ. Magazine.)

In the past 10 years, Paine has guided Swift through some of the more tumultuous moments of her career: her feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West; her trial accusing a former DJ of sexual assault; her battle against her former label, Scooter Braun and private-equity giants for the control of her master recordings. At almost every turn, Paine presents Swift—arguably the most famous woman on the planet, a billionaire with a private jet—as a relatable underdog fighting for her voice to be heard. 

It has, for the most part, worked. In the process, Paine has become one of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry. 

Getting any kind of journalistic access to Swift has become a fool’s errand. The star sits for few magazine interviews, and in between, Paine does her best to ensure that no information about Swift that Swift has not expressly chosen to share with the public becomes available. One magazine writer recalls the slightly fraught process of interviewing another artist on one of Swift’s stadium tours a few years ago. As a condition of the interview, the writer had to agree that anything they witnessed or discovered about Swift while spending time with the other artist before a show would be off the record. Paine was clear: No journalist is going to catch Swift in her sweatpants backstage and write about it. 

When writer Emily Kirkpatrick reached out last year to seek Swift’s comment for a profile of the actress and musician Suki Waterhouse for the fashion website Ssense, Paine surprisingly acquiesced, with the caveat that Swift’s quote be printed in full—no edits, no line breaks. (Kirkpatrick, annoyed, accepted the terms.)

This is an understandable sticking point for Paine. The Kardashian-West debacle revolved, in large part, around a truncated recording of Swift. Before the rapper released the single “Famous,” which contained lewd lyrics about Swift, they spoke by phone, where he asked her to promote the track on Twitter. For years, a snippet of the call released by Kardashian painted Swift as a liar who publicly rejected the lyrics but privately approved them. When someone released the full call online—a friendly heads-up but one in which West never shares the final lyric (“I made that bitch famous”)—Kardashian tried to save face. “To be clear, the only issue I ever had around the situation was that Taylor lied through her publicist who stated that ‘Kanye never called to ask for permission…,’ ” she tweeted. But Paine never said that exactly. She tweeted a rejoinder: “I’m Taylor’s publicist and this is my UNEDITED original statement. Btw, when you take parts out, that’s editing. P.S. who did you guys piss off to leak that video?”

The biggest year of Swift’s career has also been her most public yet. There’s the tour, the new album, the NFL boyfriend, the constant tabloid coverage of her relationship with the NFL boyfriend, the never-ending paparazzi strolls with her famous friends at sceney New York City restaurants. There have been stumbles: Swift forgot to thank Celine Dion, who presented the album of the year award, when accepting her Grammy. (A photo of the two singers hugging circulated online later.) She’s still taking heat for her private jet. She dated Matty Healy. 

But the sheer volume of information about Swift that pours, ceaselessly, out of every tabloid and news outlet from the Daily Mail to the New York Times typically washes away negative stories as soon as they are published. There are fans who speculate that Paine sent Swift to Kelce’s regular-season game against the New York Jets in October so that internet searches for “Taylor Swift jets” would return cheery images of Swift dancing in a VIP suite with Blake Lively instead of stats about CO2 emissions. 

Swift is at a point in her career, however, where she could completely disappear from view and still generate more headlines than just about any other person on earth. Scientists at Caltech and UCLA recently published research proving the existence of “Swift quakes” (seismic activity caused by fans dancing and jumping at concerts). Ancestry.com shared on social media that Swift is a sixth cousin, three times removed, of poet Emily Dickinson. The New York Post talked to experts to guesstimate how much Kelce has spent wooing Swift so far (more than $8 million, allegedly). 

If Swift released The Tortured Poets Department with zero fanfare, it would probably still hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts. But she chooses to feed the beast—with black-and-white Instagram posts, snippets of possible lyrics, a pop-up poetry library, so many vinyl editions—and, with Paine’s help, make her own news.

[vague-humanoid]

@chrisdornerfanclub

Edward Williams, a Kansas City Police Department traffic cop, filed the employment discrimination lawsuit Monday in Jackson County Circuit Court. In it, he says police leaders are disobeying the law by continuing to encourage officers to meet ticket goals in the traffic unit as part of their measured performance.

Williams says he was punished for raising complaints with his commanders over the so-called ticket quotas and “potentially racially discriminatory” policing practices in predominantly Black and other racial minority neighborhoods.

Williams, who says he has been with the department 21 years, complained to KCPD’s human resources department about a supervisor’s alleged directive “to go to minority neighborhoods to write tickets because of the belief that it would be easier to write multiple citations for every stop,” the lawsuit says.

[damnhotmsimmons]

The BAU and their parents: A summary

A list of the cm characters and their parents and the status of said parents based on what we know from the show

Hotch: His father was mentioned and is implied to be abusive, based on a scene in 1x08. His mother was mentioned to have come from Manassas, Virginia

Emily: Mother is named Elizabeth and is a diplomat. The relationship was strained but the two somewhat reconciled at the end of 2x20, though her mother was never again and was last mentioned in 4x17. There has never been any mentioned of Emily's father, not to mention the uncertainty of whether he's deceased or is alive and divorced

Morgan: Born to an African American father and white mother. His father, Hank, was a police officer and was killed. His mother, Fran, only appeared in 2x12, but was mentioned a couple of times. Hank appeared once in 4x10 and again in 11x16, whom he has a significant role in

Reid: Mother is Diana Reid, who suffers from severe schizophrenia. His father, William Reid, left both Diana and Spencer. William only appeared in s4, him and Reid having a strained relationship, unlike Reid and Diana. Despite Diana's condition, she and Reid still care for each other

Garcia: Lost her parents in a car accident when she was 18. Her stepfather and step brothers are latino, hence her surname "Garcia". Iirc, 3x09 showed her birth parents, whom are also deceased and she mentioned to Luke in 12x01 that she was adopted by the Garcias after losing her original parents

JJ: Has a mother named Sandy, and the two had a somewhat distant relationship, based on 10x06 and 14x12 due to the fallout and unresolved trauma over Roslyn's death. As of 14x12, the two are on more amicable terms. As for JJ's father, he was only mentioned once in 14x12 where it's revealed that he left Sandy and married another woman

Matt: His parents aren't mentioned in cm but are mentioned in 2x04 of criminal minds: beyond borders where it's revealed his mother is named "Mi-Young" and was recently deceased prior to the events in the episode, somewhere in late 2016/early 2017. His father is not mentioned, aside from the fact that he's white and his relatives being racists due to Matt and Mi-Young being Korean. It is unclear if Matt's father is still alive or deceased and if the two have a close or strained relationship

Luke: Based on his and Tara's interactions and the "your mom" jokes in 13x22, it's implied that his mother is still alive. His father was mentioned in Evolution and is revealed to also be in the military and is deceased. His mother has yet to appear at all in the show

Tara: Her father is named Albert, who is ex-military and is still alive as of 12x07, in his first and so far, only appearance. Her mother was mentioned in the same episode and is revealed to have died from breast cancer when Tara was young

Elle: Her father was a police officer named Robert, who was killed in the line of duty. Her last words to him were "I hate you." as she was young and was upset at him for missing her first bicycle ride. He appears in a dream sequence in 2x01, giving Elle a heart-to-heart talk while Elle was fighting for her life in the real world. She would visit his grave in 2x06. Her mother was hardly mentioned at all, unlike Tara and Blake

Blake: Her father is Damon Miller and he used to be the captain of the Kansas City Police Department. Made his only appearance in 9x11. Her mother was mentioned in 9x06 during Garcia's day of the dead themed party, where it's revealed that her mother is deceased

Seaver: Her father is a serial killer named Charles Beauchamp also known as "The Redmond Ripper". Her father is currently in prison and she has yet to see him or even read the letters she wrote to him but it's clear she wants nothing to do with him despite being related due to the fact that he is a serial killer. Not much is mentioned about Ashley's mother aside from the fact that her maiden name is "Seaver", which Ashley used in favor of "Beauchamp" and distancing herself from her father. They were mentioned once in 6x10 and briefly appeared in a vision

Rossi: His father was mentioned only once in 13x18 and is implied to go by "Mr. Rossi"

That's all I can recall. Let me know if I missed anything or anyone

@unitchiefs-blackbirdphoenix, @missmitchieg

[the-eternal-quest-for-balance]

While you supposedly see Police Officers " allegedly " protecting a citizens rights, why didn't they do that for the Jan 6 Political Prisoners ?

The Police follow orders, orders issued by Politicians. It's not philosophical, it's a paycheck.

So don't be surprised when instead of having your back, they shove knives in it.

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

Police charge White man for shooting Black teen boy

A white homeowner in Kansas City, Missouri, has been charged with armed assault after he shot a Black teenager who rang his doorbell by mistake, authorities announced on Monday.

Andrew Lester, 85, is also facing a charge of armed criminal action after shooting Ralph Yarl, 16, twice on Thursday. The teenager, a high school junior, was going to pick up his younger twin brothers from a play date when he went to the wrong address. Zachary Thompson, the prosecuting attorney, announced the charges late on Monday after intense local protests and widespread outrage over the police’s decision to briefly detain Lester before releasing him without charges.

Lester was not in custody early Monday evening, but there was a warrant out for his arrest, Thompson said. Charging documents said that Lester came to the door when the doorbell rang and then shot the boy in the head, before shooting him again, and that no words were exchanged before he opened fire.

Yarl was recovering at home after being released from a Kansas City hospital on Sunday, where he was being treated for gunshot wounds to his head and chest, his family said. Lee Merritt, an attorney for the family, told the Guardian that Yarl suffered a fractured skull, a traumatic brain injury involving swelling, post-concussive syndrome and injuries to his arm. “The family is elated that Ralph didn’t succumb to his injuries, but now they’re angry about the failure of the justice system to show any value or appreciation of his life,” Merritt said in an interview on Monday morning before the charges were announced.

Kansas City police had insisted earlier that they could not take further action until they spoke to the seriously injured boy.

Stacey Graves, chief of the Kansas City police, defended the release of the unnamed homeowner on Sunday, citing Missouri law that states a person can be held for only 24 hours before being formally charged or released. But she said her department was working quickly to prepare evidence for the Clay county prosecutor as its felony investigation continued.

“We recognise the frustration this can cause,” Graves told reporters. “I want everyone to know that I am listening, and I understand the concern we are receiving from the community.”

Graves acknowledged hundreds of protesters who gathered outside the home where the youth was shot, carrying placards with statements including “Ringing a doorbell is not a crime.” The police chief had said detectives were looking into whether the homeowner was protected by stand-your-ground laws regarding self-defence. Crump countered Graves’s assertion that while she recognised “racial components” of the incident, “the information we have now does not say that that is racially motivated”.

According to his family, Yarl, a high school junior with a passion for music, was given the address to pick up his 11-year-old brothers but mistakenly went to a house on 115th Street instead of 115th Terrace and was shot after knocking at the door. Faith Spoonmore, the teen’s aunt, was among protesters on Sunday. She said the homeowner “opened the door, looked my nephew in the eye and shot him in the head”. She said he was shot a second time after he fell to the ground, was able to get up and run away, and knocked at three homes before someone helped him.

“Even though he is doing well physically, he has a long road ahead mentally and emotionally,” she wrote in a GoFundMe appeal to raise money for medical bills and other expenses. By Monday afternoon the appeal had reached nearly $2m.

Quinton Lucas, the mayor of Kansas City, said members of the police department attended the Sunday protest to listen to community concerns.

“This is not something that has been dismissed, marginalised or diminished in any way. This is something that is getting the full attention of the Kansas City police department,” Lucas said.

Merritt said it was rare for a victim to survive this kind of a shooting, and that he was grateful the teenager would be able to tell his side of the story. But he said the family had been struggling to process the news that the man who shot him was released from custody: “They live in the same neighborhood, they may see him at the grocery store or around corner. That causes a lot of anxiety and fear among the family.”

[lboogie1906]

Georgia Ann Hill Robinson (May 12, 1879 -September 21, 1961) became the first Black woman police officer to work for the Los Angeles Police Department and possibly the first in the country in 1916. Months before 15 percent of the police force of the US would begin enlisting to enter combat in WWI, she began her groundbreaking twelve-year career with the LAPD. Her work for the LAPD would lead her to civic work, and she would devote her life to serving the residents of Los Angeles by fighting against segregation and for women’s welfare.

She was born Georgia Ann Hill in Opelousas, Louisiana. She never knew her parents and was raised by her older sister and grew up in a Roman Catholic convent. She moved to Kansas to work as a governess. She met and married Morgan Robinson. The couple moved to Leadville, Colorado, and to Los Angeles with their daughter. In Los Angeles, her desire to serve led her to get involved with various community organizations, and it was through her work with these groups that she was approached and convinced by an LAPD recruiter to join the force.

On July 25, 1916, she became a volunteer for the LAPD. On June 10, 1919, she became the city’s first Black policewoman when she was hired as a jail matron. She became involved in juvenile and homicide cases investigated by the department. She discovered the need for a women’s shelter in Los Angeles and helped to establish the Sojourner Truth Home for destitute women and girls.

Her time with the LAPD would come to an abrupt end when she tried to break up an altercation between two drunken women in her jail. In the resulting fight, she suffered a devastating head injury that left her permanently blind. She retired, living on disability. When, in 1954, Ebony magazine asked about her injury and her police career, she said, “I have no regrets. I didn’t need my eyes any longer. I had seen all there was to see.”

She continued to serve her community. She worked with community leaders in the effort to desegregate Los Angeles schools and beaches and continued to work with women in the shelter. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[freelancearsonist]

Start from the beginning.

“Oh.” He casts a glance at the tiny loveseat, then looks back at you. If you weren’t smarter, you’d almost say there’s disappointment in those chocolate brown irises. “Are you sure? It looks small.”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

You move around each other easily in the little bathroom as you get ready for bed, like you’ve been doing this together for years. That’s the scariest thing about Dieter Bravo: how easy it is to be around him. He seems like an abrasive personality, and yet he complements you perfectly.

For a moment as you curl up under a spare blanket on the little loveseat, you almost reconsider his offer of sharing the bed. You feel like you could trust him not to pull any funny business.

“Goodnight, sweetheart,” he murmurs before flicking off the bedside lamp, and your internal debate leaves with the light.

The smell of coffee pulls you out of your light slumber; Dieter’s hunched over the little machine on the desktop, mumbling to himself about hating technology.

“Good morning,” you murmur as you try to rub the kink out of your neck.

He turns to you with a sleepy smile, eyes a little droopy and hair mussed up–presumably from a night spent tossing and turning. The tangled-up mess of sheets on the bed corroborate his hair’s story.

“How do you take your coffee?” He asks before smacking the little machine with the heel of his palm. It doesn’t sound good–the coffee coming out makes a goop-like noise as it drops into the paper cup he’s placed underneath the spout.

“I’ll skip it,” you say with a little apprehension, “thank you though.”

He shrugs, then sets to work pouring four or five little packets of creamer into his cup. “I wanna be on the road in an hour so it’s not too late when we get there.”

“Okay.” You claim the bathroom for twenty minutes so you can take a quick shower, change your clothes, and brush your teeth. Dieter shuffles by with a kind smile once you’re done so he can complete his own morning routine. An hour later, you’re on the road again.

Kansas is horribly boring to drive through when you’re not in one of the cities. It’s flat and there’s nothing but fields for miles. You’re thankful you have Dieter to talk to or you’re not sure you would get through this. But you do–after ten perilous hours (closer to twelve, really, with all the pit stops) you reach your destination: a little town called Flint City, population 2,465 according to the sign at the edge of town.

Dieter’s the first to mention it. For a town with that many people, it’s eerily quiet. No cars on the roads, no people out and about. He explains that the tip came in anonymously. He was looped in on something about crop circles on the east side of town, but upon further research he found something even more concerning and almost definitely related. Apparently there hasn’t been a single missing person report in this little hamlet for nearly twenty years, but in the past month there have been ten. Ten people, all of whom vanished without a trace.

As you drive down the main street through town, you’re suddenly sure that the number is a lot more than ten. There are cars abandoned everywhere, even in the midst of the streets. It’s like a modern day Roanoke, and it makes your skin prickle with apprehension.

“Are you sure it’s safe to be here?” You ask as you pull up to a little building with a “Flint City Police Department” sign out front. 

“No,” he answers honestly, “actually, it’s probably not safe at all.”

You appreciate his candor, at the very least. It does nothing to make you feel better, though.

He jogs up to the door, and it’s unlocked. You’re stuck motionless as you stand outside your driver’s side door, though. There are signs of life everywhere. Business doors stand propped open, toys litter the front lawns of neat little two-story houses. This isn’t a town where everyone decided unanimously to pick up and leave. It seems like a rapture-level event has happened here, only isolated to this town. You feel quite like you’ve walked into a new chapter of Children of the Corn, and it makes you shudder involuntarily.

“There’s no one here,” Dieter shouts to you from the doorway. You’ve already gathered as much, but you let him state the obvious anyway. 

It’s already approaching dusk and you’re both tired from the long day of travel. Dieter looks at you, a mix of apprehension and exhaustion on his face–and you can tell he’s holding something back; you’re just not sure what.

“We should find somewhere to set up base,” he tells you, “but I don’t think there’s a hotel in town.”

You look around and feel a strange sense of irony. “Thank god all the houses are vacant then.”

Dieter decides on a modest little two-bedroom with bare-minimum amenities and hardly any decoration. It’s easier to work somewhere that doesn’t feel lived in, he says, and you have to agree. It’s easier to forget that you’re intruding in someone’s home when it doesn’t feel like a home.

The hardest part of this whole ordeal is that you don’t have even remotely a clue what’s happened here. The crop circles are a stereotypical alien calling card, but you’ve never heard of a town-wide abduction before. You’re brand-spanking-new to all this and you don’t know how to make heads or tails of any of it.

Dieter seems to have some sort of idea, but he’s not letting you in on his plan–if he even has one.

“We need to start with the crop circle,” he proclaims, and you don’t have any argument against that. He’s the expert–you’re just his humble assistant.

It’s getting dark and a little chilly, but you drive out to the fields together anyway. The entire population of Flint City has disappeared and there’s no telling what kind of danger they’re in; you agree full-heartedly with Dieter that it’s important to get to the bottom of this mystery as soon as possible.

Every one of your senses is on high alert as you emerge from your car. You can’t see anything out of order at the edge of the field, but you guess crop circles are typically in the middle. There’s electricity in the humid air that surrounds you–a sense of foreboding, but also a sense of excitement. You’re terrified, yet intrigued.

“I want to go check it out,” Dieter tells you, grabbing a camera from the backseat. “Stay here.”

“Dieter–”

“I’ll be five minutes, sweetheart,” he assures you in his best soothing voice, “I just want to take a quick look. I’ll call for you if I need anything.”

There’s no further argument–he trudges forward into the tall rows of corn without a second look.

You keep your phone in hand so you can watch anxiously as the minutes tick past. Seven come and go before you start to get worried. You dial Dieter’s contact on your phone and hear his ringtone coming from the center console in your car. 

Your anxiety doubles at minute ten. He should be back by now, for sure. This field isn’t that big. What if something has happened and he needs help? He doesn’t have his phone to call you.

Minute twelve is when you hear it: the most blood-curdling scream you’ve ever heard in your life. It makes every hair on your body stand up on end. That was Dieter, there’s no doubt in your mind. He’s in trouble, and you’re the only person around for miles.

Choose your card carefully.

The Death - Go into the field and find Dieter.

The Hanged Man - Stay out of the field and wait.

[beardedmrbean]

MARION, Kan. (AP) — A small newspaper and a police department in Kansas are at the center of a dispute over freedom of speech that is being watched around the country after police raided the office of the local newspaper and the home of its owner and publisher.

Officials with the Marion Police Department confiscated computers and cellphones in the Friday raid, prompting press freedom watchdogs to condemn the actions of local authorities as a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution’s protection for a free press. The Marion County Record's editor and publisher, Eric Meyer, worked with his staff Sunday to reconstruct stories, ads and other materials for its next edition Wednesday.

A search warrant tied Friday morning raids, led by Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody, to a dispute between the newspaper and a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell. She is accusing the newspaper of invading her privacy and illegally accessing information about her and her driving record and suggested that the newspaper targeted her after she threw Meyer and a reporter out of her restaurant during a political event.

While Meyer saw Newell's complaints — which he said were untrue — as prompting the raids, he also believes the newspaper's aggressive coverage of local politics and issues played a role. He said the newspaper was examining Cody's past work with the Kansas City, Missouri, police as well.

“This is the type of stuff that, you know, that Vladimir Putin does, that Third World dictators do," Meyer said during an interview in his office. "This is Gestapo tactics from World War II.”

Cody said Sunday that the raid was legal and tied to an investigation.

The raids occurred in a town of about 1,900 people, nestled among rolling prairie hills, about 150 miles (241 kilometers) southwest of Kansas City, making the small weekly newspaper the latest to find itself in the headlines and possibly targeted for its reporting.

Last year in New Hampshire, the publisher of a weekly newspaper accused the state attorney general’s office of government overreach after she was arrested for allegedly publishing advertisements for local races without properly marking them as political advertising. In Las Vegas, former Democratic elected official Robert Telles is scheduled to face trial in November for allegedly fatally stabbing Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German after German wrote articles critical of Telles and his managerial conduct.

Meyer said that on Friday, one Record reporter suffered an injury to a finger when Cody wrested her cellphone out of her hand, according to the report. The newspaper's surveillance video showed officers reading that reporter her rights while Cody watched, though she wasn't arrested or detained. Newspaper employees were hustled out of the building while the search continued for more than 90 minutes, according to the footage.

Meanwhile, Meyer said, police simultaneously raided his home, seizing computers, his cellphone and the home’s internet router.

But as Meyer fielded messages from reporters and editors as far away as London and reviewed footage from the newsroom’s surveillance camera, Newell was receiving death threats from as far away, she said. She said the Record engages in “tabloid trash reporting” and was trying to hush her up.

“I fully believe that the intent was to do harm and merely tarnish my reputation, and I think if had it been left at that, I don’t think that it would have blown up as big as it was,” Newell said in a telephone interview.

Newell said she threw Meyer and the Record reporter out of the event for Republican U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner at the request of others who are upset with the “toxic” newspaper. On the town's main street, one storefront included a handmade “Support Marion PD” sign."

The police chief and other officials also attended and were acknowledged at the reception, and the Marion Police Department highlighted the event on its Facebook page.

LaTurner's office did not immediately return phone messages left Sunday at his Washington and district offices seeking comment.

Newell said she believes the newspaper violated the law to get her personal information as it checked on the status of her driver's license following a 2008 drunken driving conviction and other driving violations.

The newspaper countered that it received that information unsolicited, which it verified through public online records. It eventually decided not to run a story because it wasn’t sure the source who supplied it had obtained it legally. But the newspaper did run a story on the city council meeting, in which Newell herself confirmed she'd had a DUI conviction and that she had continued to drive even after her license was suspended.

A two-page search warrant, signed by a local judge, lists Newell as the victim of alleged crimes by the newspaper. When the newspaper asked for a copy of the probable cause affidavit required by law to issue a search warrant, the district court issued a signed statement saying no such affidavit was on file, the Record reported.

Cody, the police chief, indicated that probable cause affidavits were used to get the search warrants. When asked for a copy, Cody replied in an email late Sunday that the affidavits would be available “once charges are filed.”

Cody defended the raid, saying in an email to The Associated Press that while federal law usually requires a subpoena — not just a search warrant — to raid a newsroom, there is an exception “when there is reason to believe the journalist is taking part in the underlying wrongdoing.”

Cody did not give details about what that alleged wrongdoing entailed.

Cody, who was hired in late April as Marion’s police chief after serving 24 years in the Kansas City police, did not respond to questions about how police believe Newell was victimized.

Press freedom and civil rights organizations said that police, the local prosecutor's office and the judge who signed off on the search warrant overstepped their authority.

“It seems like one of the most aggressive police raids of a news organization or entity in quite some time,” said Sharon Brett, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, adding that it seemed “quite an alarming abuse of authority."

Seth Stern, director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement that the raid appeared to have violated federal law, the First Amendment, “and basic human decency.”

“The anti-press rhetoric that’s become so pervasive in this country has become more than just talk and is creating a dangerous environment for journalists trying to do their jobs," Stern said.

Meyer said he has been flooded with offers of help from press freedom groups and other news organizations. But he said what he and his staff need is more hours in the day to get their next edition put together.

Both he and Newell are contemplating lawsuits — Newell against the newspaper and Meyer against the public officials who staged the raid.

Meyer also blames the home raid for stressing his 98-year-old mother enough to cause her death on Saturday. Joan Meyer was the newspaper's co-owner.

As for the criticism of the raid as a violation of First Amendment rights, Newell said her privacy rights were violated, and they are “just as important as anybody else’s.”

[zerosecurity]

LockBit Ransomware Gang Claims Responsibility for Wichita, KS Cyberattack

The notorious LockBit ransomware gang has claimed responsibility for a devastating cyberattack on the City of Wichita, Kansas, the largest city in the state with a population of nearly 400,000. This ransomware attack has forced the City's authorities to shut down crucial IT systems used for online bill payment, including court fines, water bills, and public transportation. Wichita, a major cultural, economic, and transportation hub in the region, and home to several aircraft factories, announced the disruptive ransomware attack last Sunday, May 5, 2024. In response, the City's IT specialists promptly shut down computers used in online services to contain the damage and stop the spread of the attack, as stated in their announcement: "This decision was not made lightly but was necessary to ensure that systems are securely vetted before returning to service." LockBit Ransomware Gang Threatens Data Leak Earlier today, the LockBit ransomware group added Wichita to its extortion portal, threatening to publish all stolen files on the site by May 15, 2024, unless the City pays the ransom. This unusually quick listing of a ransomware victim, merely three days after the attack, is believed to be in retaliation for the recent international law enforcement operation that named and sanctioned the leader of the LockBit ransomware operation, a 31-year-old Russian national named Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev, who uses the online alias "LockBitSupp."

Lockbit Lists the City of Wichita as one of its victims.

Widespread Service Disruptions in Wichita

Meanwhile, Wichita continues to face significant disruptions, with the latest status update indicating that the following services remain unavailable: - Auto payments for water bills are suspended. - Public Wi-Fi at certain locations (Airport terminal, Advanced Learning Library, Evergreen, and Walters branches of the Library). - The online catalog, databases, and some digital services of the Library. - Email communications through the city network for Library staff. - Self-service print release stations and self-check stations at the Library. - Automated materials handler at the Advanced Learning Library. - Most incoming phone call capability for the Library. - Wi-Fi and phone services at neighborhood resource centers. - Public services, including golf courses, parks, courts, and the water district, require residents to pay in cash or by check while online payment platforms are shut down. Additionally, any Request for Bid, Proposal, or Qualifications with a due date of May 10, 2024, has been deferred until May 17, 2024, and the 'Bid Opening' scheduled for Friday, May 10, 2024, has been canceled. Public safety services like the Wichita Fire Department (WFD) and Wichita Police Department (WPD) have resorted to using "pen and paper" reports, and the Wichita Transit buses and landfill services can only accept cash payments. Data Theft and Potential Leak While the City is still investigating whether data was stolen in the attack, the LockBit ransomware gang is known for stealing data before deploying their encryptors. Therefore, if a ransom is not paid, data will likely be leaked in the future on the ransomware gang's data leak site, exacerbating the already severe impact of this cyberattack on the City of Wichita. Read the full article