Originally posted by The Kansas City Star

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To save money, Topeka repeals law against misdemeanor domestic battery

TOPEKA | The Topeka City Council on Tuesday voted to repeal the city’s law against misdemeanor domestic battery, the latest in a budget battle that has freed about 30 abuse suspects from charges.

One of the offenders was even arrested and released twice since the brouhaha broke out Sept. 8.

It started when Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor announced that a 10 percent budget cut would force him to end his office’s prosecution of misdemeanor cases, almost half of which last year were domestic battery cases.

With that, Taylor stopped prosecuting the cases and left them to the city. But city officials balked at the cost.

Tuesday’s 7-3 vote to eliminate the local domestic violence law was designed to force Taylor to prosecute the cases because they would remain a crime under state law.

The matter has gotten Topeka national attention — and scorn.

“I absolutely do not understand it,” Rita Smith, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said after the vote. “It’s really outrageous that they’re playing with family safety to see who blinks first. People could die while they’re waiting to straighten this out.”

Victim advocates fear more such drastic moves as cities and counties face tight budgets at a time when advocates say domestic violence is increasing with the stress of economic hard times.

“I just hope it doesn’t spread,” said Sharon Katz, executive director of Safehome in Johnson County. “There needs to be a higher priority for people who are going to start getting killed.”

At the council meeting, several speakers, including some council members, attacked repealing the city law if only for the message that sends.

Claudine Dombrowski of Topeka threw dice at the podium. That’s what the council is doing with people’s lives, she told them.

She asked: What if the city repealed their law and Taylor still does not prosecute the crime?

“What a way to honor victims and survivors on the 24th anniversary of domestic violence survivors month,” she said.

Taylor could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.

“What this tells me … is domestic violence must not be a priority for anyone” in Topeka, Kathryn Wood said.

Council member Denise Everhart argued that repealing the city ordinance was the wrong message to send.

But the majority supported the position of City Manager Dan Stanley, who said the repeal strengthens the city’s position in negotiations with county commissioners, which he will start immediately.

“I’d like to focus the mind over at the county as to where the responsibility lies,” he said.

He hopes the matter can be settled soon and will probably involve the city paying the county some of more than $200,000 it would need to resume the prosecutions.

Shawnee County prosecutors have handled both misdemeanor and felony domestic violence cases since 2000. City officials say they don’t have the prosecutors, courts, staff, programs or even a jail to suddenly take on the work.

Councilwoman Karen Hiller said earlier Tuesday that it would cost the city $800,000 a year to hire the staff and rent jail space for the new caseload, but only about $200,000 for the county to increase Taylor’s budget enough to resume prosecutions, Hiller said.

Years ago, Shawnee County’s domestic violence program was known to be so excellent that Johnson County copied it for aspects of its program.

In Johnson County, every domestic violence case goes to county court, and the county is joining others in dealing more aggressively with domestic violence even in times of tight budgets, Katz said.

In July, police in Johnson County started questioning every domestic violence victim to see whether she is at high risk for injury or death. If she is, an officer will call a shelter and put the phone right in her hand.

Sarah North, a spokeswoman for the Rose Brooks shelter in Jackson County, said domestic violence is a community problem with long-term costs in damage to the mental and physical health of victims and their children.

“There is a cost … that I don’t think the public realizes,” she said. “We need to go up on the list of priorities.”

Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, said that around the country, prosecutors are being forced to prioritize certain types of cases, but these decisions are rarely discussed in public.

“Usually no one comes out and says that starting today I’m not going to prosecute that crime, which sends a message of failure and tells the community you’re free to commit that crime,” he said.

Joyce Grover, executive director of the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual & Domestic Violence, said the situation in Topeka demonstrates that its politicians need to give domestic violence a higher priority.

“For the city and county to say this is about economics seems disingenuous to me,” she said.

And what if the Shawnee county prosecutor continues his stance now that the city has repealed its law?

“I can’t really imagine that anyone would say that is OK,” Grover said, “including the voters.”

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Lair of Ancient 'Kraken' Sea Monster Possibly Discovered

A giant sea monster, the likes of the mythological kraken, may have swum Earth's ancient oceans, snagging what was thought to be the sea's top predators — school bus-size ichthyosaurs with fearsome teeth.

The kraken, which would've been nearly 100 feet (30 meters) long, or twice the size of the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis, likely drowned or broke the necks of the ichthyosaurs before dragging the corpses to its lair, akin to an octopus's midden, according to study researcher Mark McMenamin, a paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. [Rumor or Reality: The Creatures of Cryptozoology]

There is no direct evidence for the beast, though McMenamin suggests that's because it was soft-bodied and didn't stand the test of time; even so, to make a firm case for its existence one would want to find more direct evidence.

McMenamin presented his work Monday (Oct. 10) at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis.

Cause of death

Evidence for the kraken and its gruesome attacks comes from markings on the bones of the remains of nine 45-foot (14 meter) ichthyosaurs of the species Shonisaurus popularis, which lived during the Triassic, a period that lasted from 248 million to 206 million years ago. The beasts were the Triassic version of today's predatory giant squid-eating sperm whales.

McMenamin was interested in solving a long-standing puzzle over the cause of death of the S. popularis individuals at the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada. An expert on the site, Charles Lewis Camp of U.C. Berkeley, suggested in the 1950s that the ichthyosaurs succumbed to an accidental stranding or a toxic plankton bloom. However, nobody has been able to prove the beasts died in shallow water, with more recent work on the rocks around the fossils by Jennifer Hogler, then at the University of California Museum of Paleontoloy, suggesting they died in a deepwater environment.

"I was aware that anytime there is controversy about depth, there is probably something interesting going on," McMenamin said. And when he and his daughter arrived at the park, they were struck by the remains' strangeness, particularly "a very odd configuration of bones."

The etching on the bones suggested the shonisaurs were not all killed and buried at the same time, he said. It also looked like the bones had been purposefully rearranged, likely carried to the "kraken's lair" after they had been killed. A similar behavior has been seen in modern octopus.

The markings and rearrangement of the S. popularis bones suggests an octopus-like creature (like a kraken) either drowned the ichthyosaurs or broke their necks, according to McMenamin.

The arranged vertebrae also seemed to resemble the pattern of sucker disks on a cephalopod's tentacle, with each vertebra strongly resembling a sucker made by a member of the Coleoidea, which includes octopuses, squid, cuttlefish and their relatives. The researchers suggest this pattern reveals a self-portrait of the mysterious beast.

The perfect crime?

Next, McMenamin wondered if an octopus-like creature could realistically have taken out the huge swimming predatory reptiles. Evidence is in their favor, it seems. Video taken by staff at the Seattle Aquarium showed that a large octopus in one of their large tanks had been killing the sharks.

"We think that this cephalopod in the Triassic was doing the same thing," McMenamin said. More supporting evidence: There were many more broken ribs seen in the shonisaur fossils than would seem accidental, as well as evidence of twisted necks.

"It was either drowning them or breaking their necks," McMenamin said.

So where did this kraken go? Since octopuses are mostly soft-bodied they don't fossilize well and scientists wouldn't expect to find their remains from so long ago. Only their beaks, or mouthparts, are hard and the chances of those being preserved nearby are very low, according to the researchers.

With such circumstanial evidence of "the crime," McMenamin expects his interpretation will draw skeptics. And, in fact, it has. Brian Switek, a research associate at the New Jersey State Museum, writing for Wired.com, is extremely skeptical, writing, "The McMenamins' entire case is based on peculiar inferences about the site. It is a case of reading the scattered bones as if they were tea leaves able to tell someone’s fortune. Rather than being distributed through the bonebed by natural processes related to decay and preservation, the McMenamins argue that the Shonisaurus bones were intentionally arrayed in a 'midden' by a huge cephalopod nearly 100 feet long" (McMenamin worked with his wife, Dianna Schulte McMenamin on the study.)

As for how McMenamin would respond to critics: "We're ready for this. We have a very good case," he said.

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Originally posted by Elara

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Fuck my work for thinking that they could just not give us our lunches today because it was busy. Um... there are these things called federal labor laws, perhaps you've heard of them?

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