High school football: Playoff scenarios examined.
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THE IOLA REGISTER Locally owned since 1867
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
www.iolaregister.com
Site plan approved; G&W Foods construction to begin By RICHARD LUKEN The Iola Register
A site plan has been approved by the Iola City Council, clearing the way for construction to begin on a G&W Foods grocery store in Iola. City Council members voted, 7-0, (Austin Sigg was absent) to adopt the site plan for the 17,000-square-foot fa-
Candidate forum Wednesday A candidate forum for local, state and federal races will be at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Iola High School. Slated to participate are: Allen County Sheriff Bryan Murphy, a Republican, and his challenger, Mike Aronson, an independent. Caryn Tyson, a Republican from Parker, seeking re-election to her seat in the Kansas Senate. Carla Griffith, Ottawa, is running as a write-in candidate. Kent Thompson, Republican incumbent in the Kansas House of Representatives and Patrick McMurray, Libertarian challenger from Chanute, will appear. For the U.S. Senate, Jerry Moran, the Republican incumbent, will be represented by Joshua Berg. Democrat Patrick Wiesner and Libertarian Robert Garrard will be at the forum. DR. DARRELL Monfort, who serves on the Allen County Farm Bureau Board of Directors, will serve as the forum moderator. The forum is sponsored by Allen County Farm Bureau. The public is invited.
cility at the old Allen County Hospital site. Developers presented the plan to the Iola Planning Commission Wednesday, Iola City Administrator Sid Fleming told the Council. The Planning Commission endorsed the plan, with three
contingencies: — Utility easements be adjusted to accommodate installation of c i t y - p r ov i d e d utilities; — Documentation is provided by an engineer on stormwater runoff to ensure the proposed construction
does not negatively impact the surrounding area; and — Documentation in the form of an easement or contract for a shared parking area on the west side of nearby Medical Arts Building. The city expects none of the three issues to halt construction. Councilman Jon Wells noted the grocery is being built
on land that already had held a hospital and large parking lot, with no issues from stormwater runoff then. A groundbreaking ceremony for the grocery store is planned at 4 p.m. Wednesday. The community is invited. COUNCILMAN
Bob
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Adopt-A-Child sign-up slated for next week By SUSAN LYNN The Iola Register
Next week, Christmas begins. Signup is next Tuesday for this year’s Adopt-AChild program at Iola’s First Baptist Church, 801 N. Cottonwood. The outreach is for lowincome families who struggle to provide gifts under the tree come Christmas morning. Organizers Cheryl Sparks, Barbie Daugharthy and Teresa Gribble coordinate the effort that pairs needy families with generous donors. Over its nine years, the program has grown. Last year about 230 children each received four gifts through the effort plus another 50-60 children’s requests were handled by the Iola Police Department. Signup is from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the church. Parents are reminded to bring identification plus their children’s Social Security and medical cards and the shoe and clothing sizes of their children. The identification is solely for the purpose of establishing See SIGN-UP | Page A6
Standing before a closet chock full of presents are Adopt-A-Child organizers, from left, Cheryl Sparks, Teresa Gribble and Barbie Daugharthy. REGISTER/SUSAN LYNN
Washington state takes lead on police mental health training By ANDY MARSO Kansas Health Institute
Editor’s note: Reporters from the Topeka Capital-Journal and KHI News Service collaborated for a six-month exploration of how the state’s legal system deals with people with mental illness. This is the second of the stories in a fourday series. Legislators in Washington state broke new ground in 2015 when they passed a bill requiring all law enforcement officers to be trained for encounters with people in mental health crises. The law was born out of tragedy. On the night of Oct. 26, 2010, two Bainbridge Island police officers arrived at the home of Bill and Joyce Ostling, responding to a strange 911 call. Bill told the officers he and his wife had not made the call, but his 43-year-old son Doug, who lived in an apartment above their garage, might have. As Bill led the officers to Doug’s apartment, he warned them that his son was men-
Joyce Ostling, left, and Bill Ostling, right, talk with Jay Inslee, governor of Washington. Their oldest daughter also is pictured. The Ostings were frequent visitors to the Capitol as they lobbied Washington state legislators to approve a bill requiring crisis intervention team training for all law enforcement officers in the state. COURTESY OF BILL OSTLING tally ill. Under the Bainbridge Island police manual, that should have changed the way they approached the situation, causing them to be more deliberate and conscious of not escalating things. But neither officer had any training on how to implement the manual’s orders. Within five minutes of the officers’ arrival, Doug Ostling had been shot and was bleed-
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ing to death. Within five years of Ostling’s death, his grieving parents helped change the way all of the state’s officers approach people with mental illness. “We had been hurt more than anyone could ever hurt us again,” Joyce Ostling said in a phone interview. “So what could we do? We had to change things.” Law enforcement experts
nationwide hail the mental health training as useful, given how frequently officers deal with people in crisis since states began moving away from institutionalizations in the 1960s. But nearly every state, including Kansas, leaves the decision of whether to require the training up to local jurisdictions. Local law enforcement agencies were reluctant to give up that authority in Washington, too, but the Ostlings and their partners showed how to make the mandate palatable. The Douglas M. Ostling Act in Senate Bill 5311 requires that eight hours of crisis intervention team training be included in the basic curriculum for all Washington officers by 2017, and a two-hour refresher course incorporated into annual training. Current officers will be required to have the eight-hour training by 2021. The law also sets a goal of ensuring that at least one-fourth of the state’s officers receive a more intensive, 40-hour version of the training. “I just think it’s a real winwin,” said Sen. Christine
“It’s the little things that are vital. Little things make big things happen.” —John Wooden 75 Cents
Rolfes, the Washington state senator who spearheaded the bill’s passage. “It helps the community, it helps keep the officers safe and it’s what people want our law enforcement to be about.” Evidence supports training
Crisis intervention team training focuses on educating officers about mental illness, how to respond when they encounter people with mental illness in the community and what resources are available to help people in crisis. The training is not new. In 1988 the Memphis Police Department became the first to create a crisis intervention team. Its popularity is increasing as research shows it has the potential to save lives and reduce the incarceration of Americans with mental illness. A Washington Post database showed that about a fourth of people shot and killed by police this year had a documented mental illness. An extensive study of crisis intervention team, or CIT, See HEALTH | Page A3
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