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City Council voted Monday to approve a new collective bargaining agreement with the police union that raises the starting pay for Springfield police officers by more than $5,000 a year.
The agreement, which lasts until July 2024, also sets existing officers up to receive raises on the heels of a 3.5 percent across-the-board pay increase in January.
These moves come as the Springfield Police Department deals with recruiting struggles that have left the department with 44 vacancies. We had to make ourselves stand out from other agencies in the area, said Officer Andy Zinke with the Springfield Police Officers Association. This is a good step in the right direction.
The Stinnett case is not the only crime that has shone a national spotlight on Skidmore.
There s been enough tragedy and mystery that even a cursory search of past coverage turns up articles declaring it the creepiest small town in America and a small town with a history of violence.
That notoriety dates back to July 1981, when Ken Rex McElroy, a bully who had terrorized many of the townspeople, was shot to death in broad daylight in the middle of town. Although there are said to be dozens of witnesses, none came forward.
The McElroy killing, which inspired a book and a TV series on the Sundance channel, remains unsolved.
7:22 pm UTC Jan. 13, 2021
Lisa Montgomery, a longtime Kansan, became the first woman to be executed by the federal government in 67 years early Wednesday. She lived a childhood so abusive her attorneys call it akin to torture.
She was beaten, repeatedly raped by her stepfather and his friends and sexually trafficked by her mother.
At 18, she married her stepbrother, who also beat and raped her. She had four children in less than four years before being sterilized. She lapsed increasingly into mental illness and repeatedly faked pregnancy.
But those who believe she should be put to death say her lifetime of horrors can t excuse what came next: On Dec. 16, 2004, she loaded a steak knife, umbilical cord clamps and part of a clothesline into her car and drove 175 miles from her home in east-central Kansas to the northwest Missouri home of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, an expectant mother she had met at a dog show.