A Thankless Job

I personally know 7 active duty police officers (5 of them are with the Topeka Police Department).  On a personal note, I wanted to be an Law Enforcement Officer for many years, but dreams changed through the years.  Following some of the recent negative press that the Topeka Police Department has received, I thought it would be a great opportunity to ride-a-long with an officer and talk about the positive.  I contacted my friend’s husband (an officer with TPD) and was told that anyone can do this, and to contact the shift commander to schedule one.

On Friday April 17, 2009, I had the opportunity to ride-a-long with an officer in the Topeka Police Department during the 2nd shift.  Our day began in the Shawnee County Courthouse.  Occasionally, officers are subpoenaed to testify in cases that they responded to.  The officers were there to testify in a domestic disturbance case, but were relieved of their duty when the victim didn’t show up.  We, then went to the station (3rd and Monroe) to get me signed in and start the shift.  During the 8 hour shift, we pulled over two speeders (and issued citations), responded to two domestic disputes, responded to a shoplifting call, filed a dog bite report, and set up a speed trap.  But there were three related calls that were most intriguing. Read the rest of this entry »

Podcasts – Meet the Team and an Introduction to City Government

TransformTopeka is very pleased to announce that we have successfully recorded our first two podcasts.

The first podcast is an introduction to the TransformTopeka team and what TransformTopeka is about.  We have had the opportunity to meet a lot of people within the community, but unfortunately we haven’t had the opportunity to meet everyone.  This will hopefully give folks whom we haven’t connected with yet a chance to get to know us.

The second podcast is a brief introduction into Topeka’s city government.  With elections coming up in April, we thought it was important to help folks in our community understand the roles and responsibilities of our elected officials. Read the rest of this entry »

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City of Topeka Neighborhood Health 2007

I found the map below quite interesting. I did not know the City even had something like this. I found out from a news story on KTKA about the Elmhurst neighborhood going from "At Risk" to "Healthy".

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