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[Mizhara]

Well, if you are, it's time to start choking a bitch.
You'll probably get away with it now. On a bit more serious note... WHAT?!

Will some colonial please explain to me how this works, because I am positive it can't be as stupendously retarded and callous as that article claims it to be.

Edit: Adding the article in a quotebox for easier reading.

[spoiler]Legalizing Domestic Violence

ETA: The vote was held last night. Topeka, Kansas has decriminalized domestic violence.

“Domestic violence still remains a crime under state law which is why the move will now force the DA to prosecute these smaller cases despite budget claims. At the meeting, advocates of victims of domestic violence were quick to point out that already several individuals arrested on domestic violence calls had been released without charges because no new cases are being accepted…”

#

Topeka, Kansas has taken a rather unusual approach to trying to deal with budget woes. According to the Topeka Capital Journal, Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor has simply stopped prosecuting cases of domestic battery in Topeka. Now the city council is considering changes to the Uniform Public Offense Code developed by the League of Kansas Municipalities, “changes which would include repealing the part of the code that bans domestic battery.”

Mayor Bill Bunten says the city does take domestic violence seriously. From the International Business Times, “He said the question is not whether domestic violence offenders should be prosecuted, but who — the city or the county — should pay for it, adding that anyone who thinks domestic battery will go unpunished in Topeka is ‘dead wrong.’”

Of course, that same article also points out that, “Shawnee County has already turned back 30 domestic violence cases since it stopped prosecuting the crime on Sept. 8. Moreover, 16 people have been arrested for misdemeanor domestic battery charges and then released from county jail after charges were not filed.”

To review:

    We take domestic violence very seriously.
    So seriously that we’ve stopped prosecuting it.
    So seriously that we’re trying to legalize it.

Apparently D.A. Taylor has offered to review all domestic violence cases … in exchange for a one-time payment of $350,000 from the city.

Am I reading that correctly? Are you essentially holding domestic violence victims hostage as part of your budget negotiating strategy?

In addition to being despicable, this doesn’t even make financial sense. The CDC estimates that violence by an intimate partner costs this country more than 5.8 billion dollars annually.

Topeka, Kansas has a population of around 122,000 people, roughly .04% of the United States’ 300,000,000 people. So assuming I’m running these numbers right, Topeka’s share of that 5.8 billion dollars comes out to just over $2.3 million.

To the folks behind this mess, congratulations! You not only fail as decent human beings, you also suck at math.

Resources:

    Topeka Mayor Bill Bunten - Includes contact information
    Shawnee County Commissioners - Includes contact information
    National Domestic Violence Hotline
    National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
[/spoiler]

[Kiki Truzhari]

They don't actually 'support' domestic violence. From the sound of it they're trying to be clever and foist the cost of those cases off onto the state. The state will probably not like that and end up slamming them hard for it.

[Graelyn]

Seriously, think about the effects and motives, not the emotions that an article is encouraging you to have.

[Mizhara]

I did and it's still appalling. If there was even a hint that this might actually improve the speed and quality of domestic violence/abuse case processing I would have given it the benefit of the doubt, but I can't find that hint. Shit like this over who pays for the freakin' process?! That's so vile I can't even begin to comprehend it. Turning away cases, refusing to prosecute... for a freakin' "who's budget is this going out of?" point?

The suffering of those involved only matters if someone else pays for them to give a shit? Yeah... no...

Come on colonials. Tell me there's more to this than I can see, please.

[Kiki Truzhari]

No, you're right, it is utterly vile. Welcome to America. We really are a third world nation with a shiny veneer to hide the decay. Go a few blocks from the main business district in any town in our country and you can just feel the economic rot. People sit around on their rotting porches doing drugs because its all that lets them cope. More and more buildings are being declared unsafe, but people still live in them, because they have no place else to go.

The corporations control the media, the food production, the prisons, the medicine, while the people are fed bullshit by an alternating mix of mass media and religious stupidity. Telling everyone its all right, and Amarrica is the greatest country on earth, while paying no attention to the fact that 44 million American citizens are now trying to live below the poverty line, medical care is reserved for the rich while the majority dies in their homes because they can't afford fairly basic treatments like antibiotics. The price of food is kept artificially inflated, leaving millions with malnutrition, including far, far too many children, who, by the way, end up getting raised by sitters and day cares and the school system instead of their own parents. Since their parents are working 2 jobs each just to stop the house from foreclosing.

We're 39th in the world for education, 37th for healthcare, we just passed Guatemala with our infant mortality rate. The police are bullies and treat their citizens like their own personal punching bags, the politicians are corrupt and only concerned with making money, the churches are bigoted and are more concerned with spreading hate then anything else. We're still in two pointless wars, and we're fast approaching a point where our country will just cease to function. I'm amazed the Occupy Wall Street Movement hasn't be responded to with the national guard and mass arrests yet. Every year we slide closer and closer to tumbling into a fascist dystopia, blinding flailing our arms and lashing out at anyone who we currently perceive as the enemy until some other countries get together to put us down.

America is pathetic.

[Helen Ohmiras]

I live in an apartment.  I have two kids.  I have a loving girlfriend.  We have food on the table.  I want my children home schooled so they don't have to go to a school where an "acceptable" class size is standing room only.  I wish I had an opportunity to go back to school, or that I had a car, but you know what?  I'm happy.  I'm content.  My basic needs are met, and I have a little bit of creative outlet.  I'm just concerned about giving my daughter and son a better shot at being successful and content than I had.  I'm 32 years old, and it took me having a daughter to really appreciate what I have, and how petty some things that others have really are.  Sure I spend a bit of time online, but I don't use drugs.  I don't even drink alcohol.

I don't want my daughter to be 20+ years old, have a child of her own and a husband and still living under my roof.  I don't want to lose my house due to taking care of 4-5 people that I didn't plan on taking care of when I planned for retirement (my father had to do just that recently).  I don't buy in to the whole "American Dream" thing.  I'm happy.  I live below the poverty line and me, my children and my girlfriend are happy.

As cold as it sounds, I have my children and myself to look after.  What happens in Topeka, Kansas (one state up from where I am) can stay in Topeka.  I'm not a politician.  I'm not an activist.  I don't beat my girlfriend.  If the same thing were to happen here where I live, I'd probably roll my eyes.

I could explain the entire federal system, how such an odd and counter-intuitive and admittedly "retarded" policy could even be on the table, but let's face it; it's Kansas.  I've heard far weirder and more disturbing stories out of that state, let me tell ya'. 

[Bacchanalian]

No, you're right, it is utterly vile. Welcome to America. We really are a third world nation with a shiny veneer to hide the decay. Go a few blocks from the main business district in any town in our country and you can just feel the economic rot. People sit around on their rotting porches doing drugs because its all that lets them cope. More and more buildings are being declared unsafe, but people still live in them, because they have no place else to go.

The corporations control the media, the food production, the prisons, the medicine, while the people are fed bullshit by an alternating mix of mass media and religious stupidity. Telling everyone its all right, and Amarrica is the greatest country on earth, while paying no attention to the fact that 44 million American citizens are now trying to live below the poverty line, medical care is reserved for the rich while the majority dies in their homes because they can't afford fairly basic treatments like antibiotics. The price of food is kept artificially inflated, leaving millions with malnutrition, including far, far too many children, who, by the way, end up getting raised by sitters and day cares and the school system instead of their own parents. Since their parents are working 2 jobs each just to stop the house from foreclosing.

We're 39th in the world for education, 37th for healthcare, we just passed Guatemala with our infant mortality rate. The police are bullies and treat their citizens like their own personal punching bags, the politicians are corrupt and only concerned with making money, the churches are bigoted and are more concerned with spreading hate then anything else. We're still in two pointless wars, and we're fast approaching a point where our country will just cease to function. I'm amazed the Occupy Wall Street Movement hasn't be responded to with the national guard and mass arrests yet. Every year we slide closer and closer to tumbling into a fascist dystopia, blinding flailing our arms and lashing out at anyone who we currently perceive as the enemy until some other countries get together to put us down.

America is pathetic.

As someone who is currently ridiculously underemployed,  living with some help from my parents and looking at grad school as a way to live out the incoming double dip we're facing, as well as someone who grew up in an actual third world country and watched real economic problems, a government that was truly corrupt (during one election there was a write-in campaign for an ostrich with the slogan "I don't have arms so I can't steal!"), kidnappings were common, and the police were scarier than your average thug (I grew up learning to cross the street when I see a policeman coming my way, and being raised in that environment still has me so fucking paranoid of cops that I can't help but shake uncontrollably any time I'm pulled over or the like), I can say that the above post is laughable.

In before moderation.  But seriously.  The US has a lot of problems.  Some of your points are legit (healthcare, for instance, is a fucking travesty here).  But I think your post is about 75% hyperbole.

[orange]

Thank you Bacchanalian & Helen.

I was on the verge of ranting/flaming in response to Kiki.

colonial

Do not use this term again.  I think your intent for its use is in a derogatory fashion and I find it insulting and disrespectful of my countrymen, my ancestors, and myself.

Would you use the term in reference to those in India? or Australia? or Canada? or South Africa?  How about Egypt or Iraq?  Do you think they would appreciate the label? I doubt it.

[Ghost Hunter]

Seriously, think about the effects and motives, not the emotions that an article is encouraging you to have.

What I don't understand is how they do not have the funds to process the cases.

Person breaks the law, system is unable to process it due to funding issues. Person essentially commits a crime and gets away with it because they weren't filed into the system.

^ Basically how I understand how these dump cases seem to be going.

Wouldn't the Federal government cover the difference so the law can be done?

Edit;

Wait I re-read the article. The city has decided to decriminalize it in their local jurisdiction, forcing all cases that occur to be processed at the state level. This effectively puts those cases on the states' payroll, rather than the city/county's.

The state level government may slap them for doing that, depending. If they do an inquiry/audit/what have you on the county and see it legitimately cannot pay for it, then they might do it state-level. If peeps are crooked, someone getting a stern talkin to.

[Bong-cha Jones]

Will some colonial please explain to me how this works, because I am positive it can't be as stupendously retarded and callous as that article claims it to be.

Echoing orange, I'm not a friggin' colonial.

But, you're right, it isn't as stupid as it sounds, at least on the city's end.  Shawnee County (the county Topeka is in) decided that, to save costs, they would stop prosecuting domestic violence cases filed in Topeka.  In response, Topeka, which doesn't have the resources to handle that case load, a case load usually handled by Shawnee County, has decided to stop prosecuting those crimes, kicking them to the state to handle.

This is 100% characteristic of the relationship between Shawnee County and the City of Topeka, which has a long and ongoing political knifefight in the works over just about everything.  It's alarming, but it doesn't mean that battered spouses and girlfriends/boyfriends won't get their day in court.  It just means that, right now, they'll do it at the state level, not the municipal one.

And this, of all things, is the thread that gets me to post on these forums after a long break.

[Mizhara]

Good to hear that there's something approaching reason behind it, even if it's still horrifying.

As for the 'colonial' bit, it was actually an attempt at not being derogatory or offensive, considering that 'American' is a rude gesture and a cussword across the rest of the world at the moment. (This isn't even a joke, it's true. Use the word 'American' in conversations over here in Europe and otherwise and it's almost universally a derogatory word. The US is having serious image problems these days.) As regulars of Red's and such can attest, the word 'colonials' is that fond little nickname I used for Americans there. Not a derogatory term.

[Helen Ohmiras]

An update:

CNN is reporting that the DA has decided to go forward with prosecuting the cases.  Law interns with temporary law licenses will be prosecuting the cases with oversight from an Assistant DA.

[Mizhara]

Hmm. Suboptimal solution but at least they get the process going.

[Kaleigh Doyle]

I actually kinda like Colonial, it's got a nice ring to it. 

[Lyn Farel]

Good to hear that there's something approaching reason behind it, even if it's still horrifying.

As for the 'colonial' bit, it was actually an attempt at not being derogatory or offensive, considering that 'American' is a rude gesture and a cussword across the rest of the world at the moment. (This isn't even a joke, it's true. Use the word 'American' in conversations over here in Europe and otherwise and it's almost universally a derogatory word. The US is having serious image problems these days.) As regulars of Red's and such can attest, the word 'colonials' is that fond little nickname I used for Americans there. Not a derogatory term.

I live in Europe and can say that I do not have the same experience at all, except for the US image issues in the world. I see people using the term american pretty commonly and it is not pejorative, unless employed with a certain tone. Colonials, though, sounds quite insulting to me.