DAVIESS COUNTY,  Mo. —The Daviess County prosecuting attorney has charged 38-year-old James Aaron Griffin in Friday’s shooting of a NW Missouri police officer with Assault First Degree; Armed Criminal Action and Unlawful Use Of A Weapon, according to Daviess County Emergency Management and the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

As of 3 p.m. Saturday, Daviess County Emergency Management reported the Trenton Police Officer was still in critical but stable condition.

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By BRENT MARTIN

St. Joseph Post

A female Trenton police officer has been shot and gravely wounded while transporting a prisoner to St. Joseph for a mental evaluation.

The prisoner was also wounded.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol is declining to identify the officer, but reports she is in critical condition after being shot in the stomach.

The patrol says the Trenton officer was taking 38-year-old Jamey Griffin to St. Joseph Friday afternoon on U.S. Highway 69 for a mental evaluation at Mosaic Life Care. A struggle occurred in route inside the vehicle. The officer suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Griffin was shot in the hand. He was restrained.

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — The Trump administration is facing growing complaints from migrants about severe overcrowding, meager food and other hardships at border holding centers, with some people at an encampment in El Paso being forced to sleep on the bare ground during dust storms.

The Border Network for Human Rights issued a report Friday based on dozens of testimonials of immigrants over the past month and a half, providing a snapshot of cramped conditions and prolonged stays in detention amid a record surge of migrant families coming into the U.S. from Central America.

The report comes a day after an advocate described finding a teenage mother cradling a premature baby inside a Border Patrol processing center in Texas. The advocate said the baby should have been in a hospital, not a facility where adults are kept in large fenced-in sections that critics describe as cages.

“The state of human rights in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands is grave and is only getting worse,” the immigrant rights group said in its report. “People are dying because of what is happening.”

Five immigrant children have died since late last year after being detained by the Border Patrol, including a flu-stricken teenager who was found dead in a facility migrants refer to as the “icebox” because of the temperatures inside.

Customs and Border Protection responded to the complaints by saying: “Allegations are not facts. If there is an issue it is best to contact CBP directly. In many cases the matter can be resolved immediately.”

The agency also cited its response to a critical inspector general’s report last month, in which it said the government is devoted to treating migrants in its custody “with the utmost dignity and respect.”

The Trump administration has blamed the worsening crisis on inaction by Congress.

Many of the complaints center on El Paso, where the inspector general found severe overcrowding inside a processing center. A cell designed for a dozen people was crammed with 76, and migrants had to stand on the toilets.

With indoor facilities overcrowded, the Border Patrol has kept some immigrants outside and in tents near a bridge in El Paso with nothing but a Mylar foil blanket. Others have been kept in an empty parking lot, where migrants huddled underneath tarps and foil blankets repurposed as shade covers against the sweltering heat.

A professor who visited two weeks ago said it resembled a “human dog pound.” The Border Patrol responded by adding additional shade structures, but migrants are still kept outside in temperatures approaching 100 degrees.

Migrants in El Paso and elsewhere also complained of inadequate food such as a single burrito and a cup of water per day. Women said they were denied feminine hygiene products.

Another complaint is that migrants are kept in detention beyond the 72-hour limit set by Customs and Border Protection. Some reported being held for 30 days or more, and one told The Associated Press she had been in detention for around 45 days.

The teenage mother with the premature baby, for example, spent nine days in Border Patrol custody after crossing the Rio Grande with her newborn, according to a legal advocate who visited the girl in a McAllen, Texas, processing center.

An exodus of people fleeing poverty, drought and violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador has led to a record number of migrant families being apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months. Agents made 132,887 apprehensions in May, including a record 84,542 adults and children traveling together. Those apprehended also included 11,507 children traveling alone.

President Donald Trump’s $4.5 billion border request for things such as an expansion of detention, medical care, food and shelter has languished on Capitol Hill since he sent it over six weeks ago, with House Democrats at odds with the White House. Congress is set to go on a break in two weeks.

Lawmakers are becoming increasingly agitated.

“In the first five months of this year, the number of apprehensions at the border has already exceeded the population of Atlanta, Georgia,” said Republican Rep. Kay Granger of Texas.

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Topeka is gearing up for a major music festival that had to be moved there because of flooding.

The 24th annual Kicker Country Stampede will be held from June 20-22 at Heartland Motorsports Park in Topeka. It typically is held at Manhattan’s Tuttle Creek State Park, but water levels have been high this spring.

Plans for one Topeka area road project and one highway project have been revised to ensure they don’t conflict with the expected rush of visitors. The event typically draws more than 170,000 people.

Meanwhile, Shawnee County Sheriff’s Sgt. Todd Stallbaumer says the sheriff’s office is working with event staff on personnel needed for staffing the event. This year’s performers include Old Dominion, Jason Aldean and Jake Owen.

COWLEY COUNTY — One person was injured in a grain elevator accident Friday in Cowley County.

Just before 3:30p.m. Winfield Fire/EMS, Cowley County Sheriff’s Department, and the Kansas Highway Patrol were dispatched to for an industrial accident at the Valley Coop Kellogg Branch located at 16101 23rd Road, Winfield, according to Winfield Fire Chief Chad Mayberry.

Once on scene, rescue crews found an employee of the facility inside a metal grain bin with one lower leg entrapped in an auger. Emergency crews began working to free the victim’s leg from the auger while initiating patient care.

The patient was responsive and in stable condition. Due to the severity of the entanglement, crews contacted Wesley Medical Center to request a trauma surgeon to respond to the scene for consultation.

The surgeon was transported to the scene by Eagle Med via helicopter.

Just before 5p.m., rescue crews were able to remove the victim from the grain bin. EagleMed arrived on scene with the surgeon and the patient was transferred to their care and transported to Wesley Medical.

Authorities released no additional details on the incident early Saturday.

By CORINNE BOYER
Kansas News Service

GARDEN CITY — Every summer since 1922, locals and tourists have flocked to Garden City’s Big Pool. Once promoted as “the world’s largest outdoor free concrete municipal swimming pool,” it holds around 2 million gallons of water. “Holds” might now be an overstatement.

The Big Pool leaks. A lot.

Around 200,000 gallons of water from the pool seep into the ground per day — even after renovations that replaced pipes and sealed cracks in the concrete.

Even for a pool of its size, the water loss is “excessive,” according to Fred Jones, Garden City’s water resource manager. “It’s kinda to the point where we feel like it’s probably nearing the end of its service life.”

As the pool’s centennial nears, concern over costs and repairs have grown. The city has been asking residents this year about replacing it, though nothing’s been decided yet.

Drip, drip drip

Refilling the leaking pool costs Garden City $1,000 a day. During the period that the pool is open from Memorial Day until Labor Day, the city spends between $700,000 and $800,000 on repairs, staff and water, according to Assistant City Manager Jennifer Cunningham, who oversees the operation of the pool.

The pool’s water comes from the city’s potable water supply, which is drawn from the Ogallala and Dakota aquifers. Watering and irrigation of landscapes and lawns is the biggest consumer of water in the summer, but Jones said the 200,000 gallons the pool loses each day is still a worry.

“Concrete breaks down over time, especially when it’s out in the cold in the wintertime and it’s out in the heat in the summertime and it’s filled with water,” she said.  “It expands, it contracts and eventually breaks down.”

Instead of continuing to throw money into an old facility with porous concrete, Cunningham said bonding the amount spent on the pool and its repairs could pay for a new swimming facility.

The swimming days go way back

During the first weekend in June, Sherry Frizzell, 57, spent time at the Big Pool with her family like she’s done since she was born.

“I want to see the pool stay,” Frizell said. “Instead of putting other stuff in, they should have fixed what was wrong in the first place.”

Sixteen-year-old Ethan Rich has been going to the pool for most of his life too — since he was 3 or 4.

“It helps in the summer when it’s hot,” he said.

Back in 1921, Garden City’s Mayor H.O. Trinkle liked to swim too and he wanted a pool. So, members of the community started digging.

“It was dug with horse-drawn slips, which is kind of like a great big shovel pulled by horses, and men with shovels,” recounted Laurie Oshel, assistant director of the Finney County Museum.

Ice skaters glided across the frozen surface in the late 1920s — before the water was drained every year.

Two elephants were trained to walk over from the Lee Richardson Zoo next door and swam in the pool from 1987, when they were babies, until around 2004 when they were relocated to Florida, according to former education curator at the zoo, Whitney Buckman.

Former Garden City resident Hank Avila, now 74, remembers taking swimming lessons at the pool in 1950 and 1951. That was soon after Latino residents gained access.

The “water was cold,” he said.

But those lessons were evidence of a breakthrough. Avila recalls that some members of the Hispanic community never learned to swim because the pool was off limits. A few years before he learned to swim, the Latino community had petitioned the city for access to the pool and been denied.

The pool ultimately became integrated before restaurants and movie theaters in the area, and turned into a haven.

“I had a lot of fun there — it was part of daily life during the summer,” Avila said. He and his uncle snuck in on hot nights after hours.

Black residents in Garden City fought longer to gain access to city’s pool.

In a July 12, 1950, Garden City Daily Telegram article, one man demanded that black community members be allowed to enter the pool. S.M. Hawkins spoke at a Garden City Commission meeting and, the newspaper reported, said, “that it was all right for Negroes to participate when it came to paying taxes, but apparently it isn’t all right for Negroes to use the swimming pool which is supported by these same taxes.”

At the same meeting, Commissioner Al Gottschalk said, “It just has never been the policy to admit Negroes.”

Through the 1960s, about 65,000 people visited the pool annually, according to documents at the Finney County Museum.

A new Big Pool?

Around 300 people use the pool every day now. Cunningham said one reason attendance has declined is because of the cost, $2 per person per day. Admission was free until 2003.

To decide its future, Garden City officials gathered input all over town about the Big Pool. They talked with the Realtor’s Association, the Lion’s Club, the county health coalition, every Garden City student from 3rd through 12th grades, along with kids from nearby Holcomb, Lakin, Deerfield, and Cimarron.

Across all age groups — from households with kids to adults over age 56 — the majority responding to the city’s survey said they wanted a facility similar to the existing pool. Other options, including multiple community pools, splash parks or a water park, all ranked lower.

“This is what Garden City is known for,” said Lana Steinmetz, 46, a Garden City resident who has been coming to the pool since she was 8, hopes it will stay open. “They already put so much money into it.”

Corinne Boyer is a reporter for the Kansas News Service  Follow her @Corinne_Boyer or email cboyer at hppr dot org