Thursday, October 27, 2011

Shawnee County Commissioners: Shelley Buhler, Ted Ensley, Mary Thomas- Refuse to fund Domestic Violence Cases but prioritize golf course irrigation and personal profitable interests. A Special Interest Group-only.

Who is overseeing you? The Shawnee County Commissioners - Shelly? Ted? and Mary? 

We need an audit into these 3 people who control all the funding in Topeka,Shawnee County, KS. Imagine, three people who have the qualifications of a high school graduate, controlling all the money in the county without any oversight without any accountability but with plenty of personal vested interest with the ‘departments’ they fund—or defund. e.g  Golf course irrigation contract approved

But when these three Gestapo ‘puppet’ Nazi’s do not get their way when they bully and screw the local tax payer, the citizens of Topeka and Shawnee county, what they do?

“Well they whine and cry of course.” Check out today's latest whine. Commissioners turn to AG, citing 'no faith' in DA inquiry

Shawnee County Commissioners Contact information:

commission@snco.us

S.Buhler@snco.us and buhlerfam87@yahoo.com

M.Thomas@snco.us

T.Ensley@snco.us

 

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Shelly Buhler(S.Buhler@snco.us), Chair
District 1

Shelley Buhler aka ‘Michelle Buhler” Shelly Buhler | Facebook

Michele A Buhler

(785) 584-6617

503 W Maple Ct

Rossville, KS 66533-9783

Age:
45-49

Associated:
Husband, Stephen R Buhler and Son, Mitchell Buhler

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Mary M. Thomas(M.Thomas@snco.us)
District 2

Mary Thomas--- best friend to Vic Millers ex wife-(give’s new meaning to ‘keeping it in the family)

Mary M Thomas

3511 SE Tomahawk Ct

Topeka, KS 66605-3133

Age:

50-54

Associated:

Larry J Thomas, Dana Thomas

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Ted Ensley(T.Ensley@snco.us), Vice Chair
District 3

Ted Ensely aka ‘Theodore D. Ensley’ better known for his ‘county funded’ Ensley Gardens

    Ted D Ensley (Democrat)

    (785) 478-2030

    2500 SW Rother Rd

    Topeka, KS 66614-4746

    Age:

    65+

    Associated:

    Elna N Ensley

    Theodore D Ensley

    E******D@___.NET

Now, I ask, how in the hell can these three people wield so much power with out any transparency, accountability or oversight?

Final Budget for 2012 County budget line items indicated:

  • 27 budgets were cut,
  • 18 were increased and
  • 9 were unchanged.

I will find which is what. (If I can, the very last thing I wanted was to delve into local politics) We all already know that the Criminal, Justice, District Attorney and even the county Morgue were ‘cut’.

We have been able to ascertain that the golf course, the parks and recreation, the Ensley gardens, Public library, Expo Center were not, and some in fact increased.

We, just want you to know, Shelly, Ted and Mary, that we are calling you out. We demand that you and your commission be investigated. We are tired of your lack of prioritizing when it comes to public safety and we will not tolerate it any more.

The Community, the Victims and the Survivors are behind only one person in all this mess. Chad Taylor, the District attorney. The Topeka City Council sold us out when they ‘decriminalized domestic violence’, the Commissioners started the sell out with cuts to DA – only to have Vic Miller resign same day to take a judge position with the city. Now the Commission continues to throw tantrums?

Their is much more going on with the City Interim Manager, City Council and the Shawnee County Commission, and it stinks.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Topeka, No money for Domestic Violence but Millions $ for Golf Course’s

The District Attorney only needed a pitiless 350K (that was cut) to be able to continue to ‘on a shoe string’ to prosecute Domestic Violence cases. So now these are the real priorities, now that the national media is dying down. It’s back on to the good ole boys business as usual and ‘how we can help ourselves, our personal agenda- now that we got rid of those annoying Domestic Violence Victims/Survivors and Advocates.. …..”

It’s Business as usual in the land of OZ- Where the wizard failed to give out any hearts, brains or courage to the City government.

Topeka City Counsel Members have approved a one million dollar heath care for its City employee’s this week. (just among some other non ‘public safety’ spending spree.)

But they can NOT afford to prosecute Domestic Violence cases? WTF? They ‘decriminalize domestic violence’ to save money for non ‘public safety’ issues. I mean Crime is at an all time high in Topeka, Ks. I Guess Topeka Citizens safety is JUST NOT important. The Topeka County Commissioners (the ones who Cut the District Attorney’s Budget to prosecute Domestic Violence Case’s) is to approve a golf course irrigation system with total debt service estimated at nearly $1.4 million.

But no one thinks that 350K for Domestic violence prosecutions is important. At least not in Topeka, KS.

What’s that matter with Topeka? There is not enough public outrage-

TOPEKA, KANSAS pure and simple does not give a shit about Victims of Domestic Violence. It is business as usual--- yes, profit business in Topeka. The only city in the Nation to Decriminalize Domestic Violence, and cut funding for Domestic Violence Prosecutions.

I say ladies, grab your guns and girdles- it’s time to take care of yourself and your children, and do an “Evidentiary Abuse Affidavit'” so when you are murdered at least he wont ‘get away with it’ as they say they will and usually do. This is just one of many from Domestic Violence expert and author Susan Murphy Milano’s

The book "Time's Up A Guide on How To Survive and Abusive and Stalking Relationship" 

is the prescription that every person must obtain before they announce they are leaving. Below is an example from Chapter 4, one of many unique tools provided in the book. It is available on Amazon.com, or you can purchase via e-book or on a CD. If you have questions, the email address is: timesupforjustice@gmail.com

Chapter 4 featuring the Evidentiary Abuse Affidavit contains information that is critical to help victims’ in documenting their experiences and creating a record to insure that instances of abuse are memorialized should they be needed for future use in the
legal system.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=14769756&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=00adef&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0

Evidentiary Abuse Affidavit by Susan Murphy Milano from the Book "Time's Up" from Courage Network on Vimeo.

NO WAY OUT BUT ONE: a story of love and justice by Garland Waller and Barry Nolan

 new

http://www.nowayoutbutone.com/

Project Update #14: From Boston Magazine: ‘No Way Out But One’ to Unveil at MIT

Posted by Garland Waller and Barry Nolan Like

BY SARA EDWARDS

A compelling new documentary debuts in Boston this week that will open your eyes to a stunning injustice. No Way Out But One was co-written and directed by Emmy award winning television producer Garland Waller, currently a professor at Boston University. Waller, a friend and former colleague of mine at WBZ-TV, asked me to go to San Diego in August to critique the unfinished doc at a conference on domestic violence.

The film follows a case that gained international attention 10 years ago when a divorced mother made the FBI’s Most Wanted List for kidnapping her children from their father and escaping overseas.

Holly Collins, a battered wife living in Minnesota, divorced her husband but lost custody of her kids when the family court deemed she was so traumatized by the abuse that her parenting skills were questionable. The court also ignored evidence her ex-husband severely beat the children, even cracking his young son’s skull. In interviews with the children, now young adults, we hear about the emotional and physical cruelty they endured while living with their father. Collins took her kids and ran.

The film details their harrowing escape, how Collins eluded security at the airport pre-9/11, and how she and her children eventually became the first Americans ever granted asylum in the Netherlands.

But Collins is one of the lucky ones. She and her family (including her daughter, Jennifer, who’s director of the Courage Kids Network, which helps abused children) are now back in the U.S. and plan to attend the screening at 7 p.m. Thursday on MIT campus, room 6-120. Co-producers Waller and Barry Nolan will also be there. (Full disclosure: Nolan is a Boston Daily blogger.) Waller says she is thrilled the film was picked to lead off the new Chicks Make Flicks series, sponsored by Women in Film & Video/New England.

“I know it’s not a pleasant subject, talking about child abuse and having to acknowledge that the American family court system isn’t protecting abused children, but perhaps once people realize what is happening they can initiate change,” Holly Collins said.

It takes courage to put the spotlight on an issue that a flawed system would prefer be left in the shadows. No Way Out But One persuasively makes the case for much-needed change.

    Care to comment? View this update on Kickstarter →

     

    KICKSTARTER

    Monday, October 24, 2011

    SOMEONE SAVED MY LIFE TONIGHT – It Wasn’t Topeka and their “Lack of Stand’ on Domestic Violence

    In honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month we want the world to know that we are here… we always have been.  It was only up until recently with the ‘slap in the face’ against domestic violence survivors and victims in Topeka Kansas that our voices have only gotten louder.  We honor our fallen sisters who were not as lucky as we are to have survived a relationship.  We have faith in knowing they are guiding us as we preserve their memory.  Many are now gone but not forgotten, this is for you. http://www.topeka.org/cityofficials/Several Petitions here that have been making a difference, as well as all their contact info Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas Contact #’s

    highly urge you to sign the petitions for the demand of City Council to stop ‘bitch slapping’ DV victims, and to HIGHLY encourage and DEMAND that the Shawnee County Commissioners Shelly Buhler, Ted Ensley and Mary Thomas to Start prioritizing PUBLIC SAFETY and reinstate funding cut from all of Topeka’s DA, prosecutors, Sherriff and even the morgue.

    Cut instead the funding from parks and recreation. Ted Ensley’s Parks and Gardens, to including but definetly NOT limited to: the Expo Center, the Fancy Public Library, 400K for a new Irrigation System for County Golf Course, several 250K per round-abouts...(sadly this list goes on and on…)

    I strongly urge you to watch this 20/20 Diane Sawyer report on Domestic Violence.

    This is the NORMAL for a Victim/Survivor – (However,She was the lucky one.) The System worked for her, 90% of DV Victims do not walk away with their lives – or as the walking dead-without her children. 

    1 in 4 Women are in or have been in a DV situation as below. 1 in 2 people will know someone who is or has been a DV Situation – or what it really is “Coercive Control” a fundamental loss of life, liberty, and human rights.

    The Courts the System, the Community has failed to Support the women in their lives.

     SOMEONE SAVED MY LIFE TONIGHT

    by mamaliberty

    This woman saved my life. When I was in a violent relationship I saw the particular story on Oprah. I recognized myself in these videos, trying had to be quiet to prevent his hands on me.  The judge who sentenced this abuser was emotional when describing what he saw in that video of Susan.  I wonder what did he see?  Did he realize that domestic violence is far more damaging of a crime than originally thought?  Do we really have the equal protection under law?  We as survivors of intimate partner violence have come a long way.  Just like Susan, I am a far cry from the subservient battered slave I once was.

    If it were not for Susan and the countless other of survivors that have found their voice and share their story to the world to let us know, we are not alone, we are not crazy and you too can survive!  My work on this blog and elsewhere has led me down a path filled with love and empowerment.  My hope for the future is that all women will be protected as every human deserves.  Since we cannot eradicate “abuse” it is up to law enforcement and the judiciary to be well-informed and educated on the subject of domestic violence.  We have not only shattered that proverbial glass ceiling we are coming through it in masses.

    You are not alone, your sisters are all around you, come find us!

     

    Monday, October 17, 2011

    Topeka Maneuvers Over Domestic-Abuse Law Outrage Survivors

    From the LA Times

    Claudine Dombrowski
    Claudine Dombrowski tells of having her wrists broken, being hit on the head with a crowbar, getting chipped teeth and, at one point, needing 24 stitches to close a wound. Even when she left her boyfriend, she says, the abuse didn't stop. Ultimately, she says, she was left on total disability.

    “I called the police, I did all the right things, I ended up in court, and on a good day, it got reduced from domestic violence to disorderly conduct,” Dombrowski, a Topeka, Kansas, resident and now an advocate for abuse survivors, told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday.

    So Dombrowski was outraged when misdemeanor domestic abuse — already an insult, she thinks, for not being equal to an assault charge — went unpunished for a month in Topeka after a local funding dispute turned into a circular firing squad that caught battered women in the center.

    The county didn’t want to pay for prosecuting misdemeanor domestic battery; the prosecutor didn’t want to take the cases without more resources; and the city didn’t want to pay for handling the cases either.

    Meanwhile, as many as 30 abuse suspects went free before the city of Topeka, in a legal maneuver, forced Shawnee County prosecutor Chad Taylor to resume prosecution of the cases — by dramatically pulling its own domestic abuse law from the books. The state has its own law, which the prosecutor would need to enforce.

    “The fact that it happened just makes me feel pretty worthless, you know?” Dombrowski said. “We spend millions of dollars on public service announcements saying we [domestic-violence victims] don’t have to live this way ... and you really do.”

    Times have been tough for local governments. The economic buck stops with them because they don’t get to run on debt the way the federal government does, and some of the collapses have been spectacular.

    Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, threw up the white flag this week and declared bankruptcyafter a failed $300 million incinerator project capsized the city’s budget. The city manager formoribund Vallejo, Calif., has one assistant; she has to lock the door when she leaves, because there’s no one else in the office.

    But for women, the symptoms of the municipal budget crisis are especially stunning in the sleepy prairie metropolis of Topeka. There, the symbolic decriminalization of domestic violence has thrown a spotlight on a chronically underreported issue in a state where women’s advocates are used to fighting uphill battles.

    “We live in Kansas, where we are used to taking a lot of punches on the chin,” said Kari Ann Rinker, state coordinator for Kansas NOW, which recently saw the state legislature try to defund Planned Parenthood.

    Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s conservative stances have led a few residents to derisively dub the state “Brownbackistan.”

    But beyond the familiar battlefronts over abortion, domestic violence hits especially close to home. In 2008, Jana Mackey, a 25-year-old Kansas NOW lobbyist who volunteered to aid victims of sexual assault and domestic violence, was found slain in an ex-boyfriend’s home.

    “When I went in front of the county commission in Shawnee County about this issue [funding prosecutions for domestic abuse in Topeka], I brought everything I had, and I was emotional,” said Rinker. “Sometimes I’m accused of being less than professional. But I’ve tried to do this nicely, to fight this mentality in this state, and we’ve reached this point where we need to stop being nice and start rattling some cages to do so.”

    Added Dombrowski: “If these people really cared about women, they would come up with the money. They wouldn’t argue about it.”

    The past month has been treacherous for domestic abuse survivors in Topeka, according to Becky Dickinson, program director for the Topeka YWCA Center for Safety and Empowerment, which she said saw an increase in the number of women needing help.

    “It became a very scary and dangerous time for victims to get law enforcement involved,” Dickinson told The Times, adding that victims “were calling the police and seeing their abusers being arrested but getting released in 48 hours.”

    In an abuse situation, Dickinson said, abusers are often the most dangerous after they’ve been arrested. They come home looking for revenge. Needless to say, Dickinson said, “victims were concerned” about the budget spat.

    Dickinson said that in 2010, the Topeka YWCA helped 1,305 county residents with services and counseling for domestic and sexual violence, assisted with 586 protection orders, housed 190 women and children in a shelter, and received nearly 2,000 calls to its crisis hotline.

    Those numbers are likely low. Domestic violence often goes unreported. So it’s a dark irony that Topeka’s new time in the international limelight comes during Domestic Violence Awareness Month. “Now Topeka is known as the domestic violence capital of the world,” Kansas NOW’s Rinker said.

    Whether the county prosecutor’s announcement that it is resuming prosecutions will fix the problem remains to be seen; the prosecutor’s office is expected to lay off almost a fifth of its staff by the end of the year, which could impact the prosecution of domestic violence cases that the office just resumed prosecuting.

    “Even on a good day, it doesn’t work,” Dombrowski said of Topeka’s handling of domestic abuse victims. “And now it’s even worse.”

    --Matt Pearce in Kansas City
    Twitter.com/mattdpearce

    Photo: Claudine Dombrowski, left, a survivor advocate, greets Amber Versola, a lobbyist for Kansas National Organization for Women, on Tuesday at a rally at the Shawnee County Court House in Topeka, Kansas. Credit: AP / The Capital-Journal, Anthony S. Bush

    Topeka's "Week Without Violence" Begins Today in the Only City in the Nation that 'Decriminalized Domestic Violence

    "Week Without Violence"

    I am saddened.  The City Council continues to twist and mince words. The bottom line and  in simple English is -

     YES, THEY DECRIMINALIZED DOMESTIC VIOLENCE within the city of Topeka.


    See some of the other posts on this site.

    They want to be called hero's? They are cowards.
    They think that they know what is best for domestic violence victims? They are wrong.

     

    The YWCA begins its week with out violence in the First City in the Nation to decriminalize Domestic Violence. See event here: and please be sure to attend the March on Friday where all the State, City and County Gov. officials will be leading the March.
    KEEP WRITING the city council  (express your outrage over their thoughtless and heartless repeal of Dv) and Write the city commissioners  we need the DA's office funded!  We need help!!

    The Attorney General Derek Schmidt knows that  Domestic Violence Victims will suffer (MORE than they have already) from budget cuts and reduced staff in DA office.

    As for all those on the City Council who voted to repeal ban -- “You have not helped us “- You have hurt us -even more.

    Happy "Week with out Violence" in honor of "National Domestic Violence Awareness Month".
    Topeka has become an 'abuser' to battered women as well as an already broken system and sympathy for abusers. Be ashamed, be very ashamed.

    Labels: DISTRICT ATTORNEY, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, FUNDING, MISDEMEANOR CHARGES, TOPEKA, Topeka City Council, Topeka Kansas Decriminalize Domestic Violence"