Lawrence Journal-World 10-29-11

Page 1

CITY CHAMPS

CARDINALS WIN SERIES

Sports 1B

Sports 1B

Lions dominate Firebirds in 20-0 victory

St. Louis beats Texas 6-2 in Game 7

L A W R E NC E

JOURNAL-WORLD ®

75 CENTS

LJWorld.com

3!452$!9 s /#4/"%2 s

Nice day

High: 64

Evidently, we’re out of room

Low: 39

Today’s forecast, page 10A

INSIDE

Ottawa ‘Extreme Makeover’ to air soon

Big 12 Conference adding West Virginia

By Shaun Hittle

The Big 12 welcomed West Virginia from the Big East Conference on Friday and bid goodbye to Missouri before the Tigers even had a chance to finalize their move to the Southeastern Conference. The Big 12 said it expects to have 10 schools for the 201213 season, listing West Virginia but not Missouri, which is expected to complete its move to the SEC any day now. Page 1B

The wait is over. A national television audience will get to see a new home in Ottawa on “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” The two-hour show will air at 7 p.m. Friday on ABC. Tom Weigand, president of the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber recently was notified by ABC representatives about the airing, and there’s been a lot of excitement in the community. “A lot of people are interested,” Weigand said. “I was amazed at the following.” Local volunteer crews feverishly worked in the hot August sun during a two-day build in Ottawa for the family of Staff Sgt. Allen Hill, who was injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq. The new home includes special accommodations for Hill and his wife and two sons, including extensive sound-proofing, because Hill suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. Weigand said the build was a big boost to Ottawa, and he said ABC and the volunteer crews were a pleasure to work with. “Really a great deal,” he said.

sdhittle@ljworld.com

WORLD

Report: Improved safety in Afghanistan More than a decade since the Sept. 11 terror attacks and the start of the Afghan war, the U.S. and its allies have reversed violent trends in Afghanistan, a report shows. Page 8A

QUOTABLE

You can’t deprive them. It’s Halloween, for God’s sake.” — Ronni Litz Julien, a Miami nutritionist whose patients include overweight and obese kids, talking about how to still make Halloween reasonably healthy for little devils and witches without resorting to dracul-onian tactics, like no candy. Page 7A

COMING SUNDAY We’ll introduce you to a Topeka man who was wrongly convicted of rape — and exonerated after spending years in prison.

FOLLOW US Facebook.com/LJWorld Twitter.com/LJWorld

Kevin Anderson/Journal-World Photos

OFFICER KEITH JONES CHECKS THE THIRD LEVEL of the evidence room at the Judicial and Law Enforcement Center, 111 E. 11th St. Crime evidence is housed in various locations and space is getting tight.

Space cited as reason for new facility By George Diepenbrock gdiepenbrock@ljworld.com

Lawrence Police Chief Tarik Khatib peers into the mountains of cardboard boxes lining the main evidence storage room on the second floor of the Judicial and Law Enforcement Center, 111 E. 11th St. He jokes that his two evidence officers and civilian employee, who oversee thousands of pieces of evidence for the police and the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, could work for shipping giant UPS. “There’s not a wasted square foot of space, really,” Khatib says.

OFFICER MICHAEL RAMSEY processes items that were found in a stolen car. He had to use a roller storage cabinet for a work surface in the garage under the Judicial and Law Enforcement Center.

A ZIPLOCK BAG holds smaller bags of cash that is waiting to be counted in the evidence room.

The room is in the former gym from when that part of the building was a jail, and it now includes a steel staircase for two makeshift floors inside. It’s more room for evidence officers Keith Jones and Doug Payne to find a place for new evidence, like possible stolen items that were recovered or even drugs, guns and money. But there’s not much space left, and the police department has evidence stored in more than one place, including at the cityowned former Morton’s

police, as long as I can remember,” said the 20-year department veteran.

Building Materials Inc. building, 900 E. 15th St., where items like vehicles are contaminated with mold because the building leaks and has other problems. Khatib has used the space restrictions for evidence storage as one example in urging city leaders to explore building a new law enforcement facility to house the entire department. “We, as a law enforcement agency, have not really had a purposefully designed facility for just

INDEX Business Classified Comics Deaths Events listings Horoscope Movies Opinion Poll Puzzles Society Sports Television Vol.153/No.302

Facilities assessment Currently the city’s police department is largely split between the patrol division downtown at the law enforcement center, which also houses Douglas County District Court and the sheriff’s administration, and the Lawrence police detectives and administration in west Lawrence at the Investigations and Training Center, 4820 Bob Please see EVIDENCE, page 2A

Jayhawk flag back home after duty in Afghanistan

8A 1C-6C 8C 2A 10A, 2B 7C By Mark Fagan 5A mfagan@ljworld.com 9A 2A During her regular patrols, operat7C ing out of a post in the shadows of the 8B-9B Hindu Kush mountains, Army Spec. Janna Johnson would respond to calls 1B-6B, 10B and report positions and request as5A, 2B, 7C sistance using the same radio call sign 28 pages she’d been assigned when her unit arrived in Pul-E-Sayed eight months earlier. “Hawkeye 22 Charlie.” “Hawkeye 22 Charlie.” Energy smart: The “Hawkeye 22 Charlie.” Journal-World Over and over, every day and night, makes the the ID served as a nod to the origins most of renewable resources. of her Des Moines-based unit of the www.b-e-f.org Iowa National Guard, one filled with soldiers partial to the University of Iowa and its pervasive Hawkeye mascot. So imagine the relief, joy and pride that Johnson — a transplanted Kansan — felt the morning her fellow soldiers clasped her crimson-and-blue flag to some rope and ran it up a flagpole

outside the detainee operations center that their 1st Squadron, 113th Cavalry had been assigned to maintain, operate and protect. A giant Jayhawk flying high, keeping a watchful eye over about 100 enemy combatants awaiting transfer and her own Hawkeye-heavy platoon serving in Operation Enduring Freedom, encamped on the soils of Afghanistan. “It was awesome,” said Johnson, now on duty back in the states. “When I was over there, it stayed beside me the whole time. I’m patriotic, (and) patriotic to KU.” But Johnson knew the flag would mean even more to the woman who’d given it to her before her deployment, the woman who owns KU coasters and floaties and drinking cups and earrings and necklaces and slippers and everything else KU. So Johnson presented the flag to her stepmom, a mother of all things

Special to the Journal-World

THE FRAMED JAYHAWK FLAG made its way from Parsons to Des Moines, then to Camp Shelby in Mississippi, then to Afghanistan, then up a flagpole, then back to Des Moines and back home to Parsons, where it’s now perched in Pizzo’s Restaurant, 121 miles south of Lawrence Please see FLAG, page 2A on U.S. Highway 59.

— Reporter Shaun Hittle can be reached at 832-7173. Follow him at Twitter.com/shaunhittle.

Job seekers look for tips at Career Connection By Shaun Hittle sdhittle@ljworld.com

Retired Douglas County Sheriff’s Officer Sgt. Ken Fangohr spent three decades in law enforcement. In all that time, he had a lot of things to worry about on the job. But with the steady career, he spent little time worrying about his résumé. “It’s all new to me,” Fangohr said Friday at the third annual Community Career Connection event at Pinnacle Career Institute, 1601 W. 23rd St. Fangohr, looking for the “perfect second career,” joined other job seekers at the event, picking up tips about interviewing, résumés and other job-searching skills. And lot of the attendees were older workers, such as Fangohr, looking for second careers or starting over after spending decades at one job, said Tracy Bedell, a Johnson County Community College adjunct professor who was helping job searchers with mock interviews. For those workers, the employment environment is considerably different from years ago, she said. “The landscape has changed,” Bedell said. For some, re-entering the job market is “kind of scary.” Despite the tight job market, Please see CAREER, page 2A


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.
Lawrence Journal-World 10-29-11 by Lawrence Journal-World - Issuu