Duties Of Schools Boards And County Attorneys

Oh yes! The Kansas State Board of Education is now in the process of revoking six teaching licenses of teachers who, the Board discovered, had felony criminal records. The crimes in question have mostly been abuses of children, but at least one was a violation of a prohibition law. According to Cheryl Whelan, the attorney who represents the Kansas State Department of Education, the State Board of Education has a responsibility to make sure that no teacher renews a license after conviction of certain crimes, and that no new license is granted to a felon. An interesting additional comment she made is this: “There doesn't have to be a conviction,” she said. “It can be any act that endangers or injures the health or welfare of a minor through physical or sexual abuse or exploitation. The perception that a conviction triggers a duty to report is incorrect.” That means that if a teacher has committed a crime that has not been reported or prosecuted, which often happens in these parts because of corruption and judicial favoritism, and if criminal acts on the part of a teacher have been admitted, or can be proven to the satisfaction of the Board, the license in question should not be renewed, if the Board is following the law to the letter. That certainly is intriguing, considering that in 2009, a guidance counselor deliberately dropped my daughter off on a stretch of highway and never contacted law enforcement or yours truly. Luckily, she was found several hours later. Because of the danger this type of action on the part of a teacher presents, I reported it, yet no one wanted to do anything about the creepy guidance counselor's criminal act toward my daughter. This brings me to the other point made by Cheryl Whelan about the ability and responsibility of the Kansas Board of Education about revocation of teaching licenses when teachers prove unworthy. The misdeeds get swept under the rug, so to speak, in much the same way district and county attorneys manipulate testimony and evidence for cases here in Kansas. Oddly enough, Whelan has the notion that the Board of Education's agency for hearing these cases, the Professional Practices Commission, does not get the cooperation it needs in order to serve the schools and children properly. She complains that the "agency has often had trouble enforcing those laws because school districts and local prosecutors often failed to report cases to state licensing officials." Imagine that! In the state of Kansas!

What's most amusing is that Whelan calls the situation "the new normal". New?

 

 

 

A Letter From Topeka

This morning, Chad Taylor, of the District Attorney's Office in Topeka, issued a letter to everyone about the fact that he does not prosecute most crime anymore. It is kind of wordy, so I will link you to it here, and I will just quote part of it. I don't think he really says anything of value to his constituents in the letter, anyway. We all know that he is just making a choice which he says is based on budget cuts, and most of us feel that it is a bad choice. The people who don't feel that it is okay to judicially ignore misdemeanors are petty criminals and domestic violence thugs. What's happening with them is this: the police arrest them and put them in jail, and within a certain amount of time, they get released, because the district attorney in Topeka never charges them with a crime, because there is not enough money in the budget to prosecute petty crimes any more.

Here's a tidbit from the letter that explains Chad Taylor's intentions the best:

In preparation for this policy change, my office discontinued the filing of any new city misdemeanors. Ethical and practical considerations required that we stop filing new criminal cases that we knew would have to be dismissed shortly once budget cuts were instituted and we no longer had the necessary personnel to prosecute these newly filed cases. Our office has continued prosecuting all previously filed city misdemeanors as well as any new misdemeanors that occur outside the city limits, but within Shawnee County.

There are several things that I find disturbing about this, among them is the idea that if I ran a business in Topeka, my insurance would probably go up, since the DA has very publicly stated that is it almost legal to steal there. A myriad of other crimes no longer have consequences, either. But what I find most disturbing is this..........domestic violence and child abuse are both usually misdemeanors. The victim has to present with fatal or near-fatal injuries for these crimes to become felonies. Guess what's happening with domestic violence thugs in Topeka now, friends.........Yes indeed......these creeps are getting arrested initially by cops who don't want to find corpses at the same addresses later on, after they stop the violence; but since Chad Taylor knows that it is a lot more cost effective, from a strictly fiscal point of view, to bury a domestic violence victim that to help her, or to bury or sell a child abuse victim than to help a family find other options, these offenders are getting released almost as quickly as they get arrested. How long will it take for someone in power to give the police a directive to stop intervening in domestic violence situations at all?

I asked this a couple of weeks ago on this blog, and I will ask it again. Wouldn't it have been a better idea, for the safety of the general public, if Chad Taylor had decided to stop prosecuting victimless crimes, instead? As a citizen, I am completely uninterested in sending someone to prison for years on end and limiting his or her opportunities forever with a permanant criminal record just because he or she took a bong hit somewhere, at the wrong place or time. As a taxpayor, I am completely uninterested in paying for the indefinate room and board for that type of "criminal", too. In fact, the biggest impact prohibition laws have had on our entire population is the criminalizing of people who would not otherwise have had encounters with our judicial system. Think of all the money Topeka could save it it didn't focus on bong hits. Nationwide, if we just loosened our grip on prohibition laws concerning marijuana (don't get me wrong, folks, I am NOT condoning drunk driving, opium dens, dirty needles, or bathtub gin!) we could effect the pleasant result of forcing the drug cartels to look for income elsewhere and lots of drug dealers would have to find gainful employment. Did Chad Taylor give this any thought?


                                                                                                      

                                  A "misdemeanor" hit.   Notice, also, the victim's gender. Any possible relevance to the gender of most domestic violence victims  and Chad Taylor's decision to shirk his duties at this particular juncture will have to wait for another post, though. Hopefully, Chad Taylor will stop this nonsense and start doing his job again, before I have to create another post.      
                                                  

Here, we have a "hit" that is usaully a felony, after our judicial system has gotton through with it, using your tax dollars and mine.