This has to be one of the worst budget-cutting ideas I’ve ever heard. Wow. I honestly don’t even know what to say.
The Topeka City Council will decide next week whether to essentially legalize domestic violence in the Kansas capital, in a budgetary game of chicken with Shawnee County, which encompasses Topeka. The fight started when Shawnee District Attorney Chad Taylor, facing a 10 percent budget cut for next year, announced Sept. 8 that his office would no longer prosecute misdemeanor cases, including those involving domestic violence, inside Topeka city limits. The City Council is betting that if it strikes Topeka’s ordinance against domestic battery, it will force Taylor to reconsider. Here’s what you should know:
What happens if Topeka follows through?
If the City Council repeals the domestic-battery ordinance, municipal courts wouldn’t be able to take on those cases, effectively sending the ball back to Taylor’s court. Domestic violence is still a state crime. But “because only Taylor has authority to decide what cases he files and prosecutes,” domestic violence prosecution could slow to a trickle, says The Topeka Capital-Journal in an editorial. Repeat offenders are charged as felons, and the D.A. would still take those cases.
This article appears in Oct 6-12, 2011.
Decriminalize Domestic Violence? Are you serious? Women die every day at the hands of their abusers. Does this include rapists, too? Can there be any question that women are considered expendable in Kansas? Are these people Republicans? Tea partiers? Are these people suppose to be Christians? This is their best answer to the buget crunch? I”ll bet if you get caught with a joint, you go to jail. But beat up your wife or girlfried and walk? Really? Every woman that dies at the hand of their red-neck, alcoholic lover during this little political power struggle should haunt whoever came up with that idea for the rest of their sorry, sexist lives. Women of Kansas, leave that hell hole asap.
OK, I just moved out of that stupid town a year ago. And I thought Arizona politics was crazy. Please, please, can’t I find a place to live where they don’t “solve” their problems by making things worse for the people who have it bad enough already?