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Corrupt Government Title: Sam Brownback's brother accused of terrorizing rural neighbors PARKER — Undulating fields of crops and livestock-dotted pastures are the domain of a trigger-happy bully who brags about a political cloak of invincibility keeping him beyond reach of the law in faithfully conservative Linn County. Adversaries say he has woven a liquor-infused tapestry of fear colored by intimidation, abuse and lies. The saga features stalking, death threats, trespassing, drive-by gunfire, massive explosions, cattle theft, loan defaults, hit-and-run driving and marital strife. Linn County Sheriff’s Department files bulge with complaints about him. There is trepidation among acquaintances to speak freely, a point accentuated by the number expressing nervousness about reprisal if they were candid. There is genuine fear. Descriptions of events offered by those willing to speak out converge to reveal a potentially lethal menace. Neighbors allege some in law enforcement responded to cries for help with degrees of indifference or favoritism. Locals aware of the dynamics shake their head in dismay. In a place where people honor the Second Amendment and revere the self-defense castle doctrine, there is astonishment no one has been gunned down. Folks in direct path of this prairie hellion pray for an end to what some coined “neighborhood terrorism.” So far, their nemesis has found no reason to relent. Not when your name is Jim Brownback and you are a brother to Sam, the most powerful politician in Kansas. Parker farmer Ben Katzer, who lives near Jim Brownback, said the governor’s younger brother didn’t hesitate to rub salt in wounds he inflicted on others by boasting: “Nobody can touch me.” Others have heard similar pitches. Linn County Sheriff Paul Filla witnessed Jim Brownback invoke the governor's name like body armor, but said it didn’t carry weight with him. Amid one conversation, the sheriff said, Jim Brownback declared, “ ‘I’ll just call Sam.’ ” Incendiary moment Joann Peine, social worker by profession and farm wife by marriage, ended a period of soul-searching by asking a Linn County District Court judge to issue protection orders for stalking against Jim Brownback and his stepdaughter. After years of provocation, she said, inaction could no longer be rationalized. Political, business and social prominence of the Brownbacks shouldn’t trump the safety of her three sons or anyone else, she said. This Kansas mother’s plea for a judicial shield was submitted 9:03 a.m. Aug. 27, 2013. She said motivation to reclaim peace of mind emerged from countless confrontations in and around her rural property on Baskerville Road adjacent to Jim Brownback’s home southwest of the tiny town of Parker. “He thinks he’s invincible,” she said. “He’s titillated by harassing us. He finds it funny.” Peine and more than one-half dozen others said Jim Brownback never seemed interested in concealing why he operated with hot-headed impunity. He simply referenced a God-given bond with people sharing his surname — individuals with the capacity to cool law-enforcement heat as effectively as water douses flames. “He’d say, ‘It’s the name. It’s the name,’ ” said Robert Peine, Joann’s husband. There is consensus her family’s rumble with Jim Brownback began in a ludicrous, grotesque way in June 2011 when a dog mauled two hogs owned by the Peines. It aggressively chewed on a boar’s face and lacerated a sow’s hips and legs. The Peines eventually roped the pit bull and confined it to a cattle trailer. They chose to comply with a veterinarian’s recommendation to put it down because the dog’s taste for flesh wasn’t likely to be satiated. Joann Peine said Jim Brownback claimed he didn't know the dog’s owner. In Jim Brownback’s opinion, she said, the mutt should be shot. The owner was actually Brownback stepdaughter Kara Jo Earnest, who vowed revenge when the Peines wouldn’t release the animal to her. Threat evolved into avocation for Brownback, Earnest and their accomplices. Physical distance wouldn’t be a problem. It’s a short hop as the crow flies from the Peines’ tidy, ranch-style residence to Brownback’s larger place stippled with outbuildings and equipment. Both are crop and livestock operations common to a region where country lifestyles predominate and agriculture rules the economy. Land records indicate the governor owns a few parcels nearby. Incursions by the Brownback crew onto Peine property — jumping field terraces and cutting ruts in the yard with four-wheelers, for example — inspired a visit to the Brownbacks by Linn County Deputy Russ Gardner. With Joann Peine sitting in Gardner’s patrol car, the deputy confronted Jim Brownback’s sons, Matt Brownback and Dustin Earnest, about an ATV rampage. The stepbrothers denied responsibility but generously offered the officer a beer, she said. Gardner’s departmental report affirmed no formal action was taken against the men, but the deputy did warn them someone “could be charged with trespassing.” Ground shaking In June 2011, a keg of nails was poured onto the Peines’ driveway. Jim Brownback used a vehicle to block a rural intersection and obstruct the Peines’ path in June 2012. A gutted fawn, shot through the neck in September 2012 outside the hunting season in Kansas, was dumped at the end of their drive. In May 2013, Jim Brownback stopped at the Peine place to yell “bitch” at anyone within earshot. The Peines’ mailbox disappeared. Their black Labrador retriever was found slain in a ditch 15 miles from their home. Sporadic gunfire wrapped around these incidents. Events were punctuated by explosions on Jim Brownback’s farm that met the definition of shock-and-awe. Blasts rattled windows for miles. Initially, some folks assumed a house had been flattened in a propane tank accident. Investigators discovered Jim Brownback was packing Tannerite, an explosive marketed for use as an detonating target for shooting practice, into large canning jars and blasting the mixture with rounds from a high-velocity firearm. Authorities suggested he knock it off, the county sheriff said, but Brownback felt he had the right to do as he wished on his property. “It’s legal,” Jim Brownback said in an interview. “It’s legal.” In response to Joann Peine’s request, a Linn County judge granted one-year restraining orders against Jim Brownback and Kara Jo Earnest. “Gunfire toward and near our home has my children constantly in a hyper-vigilant state,” Peine said in her protective order application. “I’m afraid they will kill me, my children or my animals — either intentionally or by accident.” Peine said stalking by Brownback never ceased but surged upon expiration of the decree Aug. 27, 2014. During the governor’s statewide re-election campaign, Jim Brownback announced his re-emergence in the neighborhood by idling a vehicle in front of the Peine residence. He just sat there radiating anger, Joann Peine said. As Jim Brownback drove away, she said, he faked like he would flatten their mailbox. “I’ve talked to Jim,” said Sheriff Filla, a Republican and U.S. Marine Corps veteran. “I’ve had other friends talk to Jim that’s closer with him than I am. He just doesn’t get along with them. You know some people, if you talk to them, the hair on your neck goes up right away? I think that’s what’s happening between them. The Peines don’t like Jim and Jim don’t like the Peines. It’s a shared problem, I guess.” Family baggage A request for an interview with Gov. Brownback about strife involving his brother was rejected without explanation. “I’m going to decline that opportunity,” said Eileen Hawley, a spokeswoman for the GOP chief executive. While the governor elected to keep thoughts on the subject to himself, Jim Brownback said he didn’t believe law enforcement cut him slack in Linn County. Criticism from outsiders comes with the territory of being a Brownback, he said. “We’re targets,” Jim Brownback said. “Sam says: ‘You’ve got to carry the baggage of the name. And, ask the Lord what to do first.’ ” He said he hadn’t used the most recognizable name in Kansas politics to deflect responsibility for his actions. “No, I don’t draw that like a gun. I’m a country guy. We keep to ourselves.” Jim Brownback said Joann Peine was instigator of all the trouble and elevated the act of complaining to Linn County law enforcement to an art form. He said she should be fired from her job in the public school district. He also urged the sheriff’s department in Linn County to quit bending over backward when someone disagreed with the Brownbacks. He suggested officers focus on nailing individuals who engaged in methamphetamine manufacturing and other societal plagues. Genesis of this rivalry was the handling of the dog thought by the Peines to be violent, Jim Brownback said. He said the Peines locked his stepdaughter in the cattle trailer with the dog before it was strangled to death. Joann Peine denies that claim. The dog, Jim Brownback said, was a Labrador that wouldn’t have attacked the Peines’ hogs. “They wouldn’t kill a rat if it was biting it on the ass,” Jim Brownback said. ‘I saw flashes’ Joann Peine compiled notes, recordings, photographs, videos, police reports and court records memorializing interplay with Brownback and individuals associated with his family. The dossier captured what transpired Oct. 27, 2012, when a four-door pickup raced past her home while shots poured out a window. Thinking the coast was clear, Peine started walking down the driveway to check on welfare of her horses near the road. The vehicle unexpectedly turned around. “Before I started yelling at them,” Peine said, “they started shooting. I saw the flashes. I took off on a dead run.” Four spent 12-gauge shotgun shells and one live shell were found on the road in front of her house, but Peine was unable to identify occupants of the vehicle. On the night of Nov. 4, 2012, a hail of gunfire cascaded from inside a large truck surging by the Peines’ home. While a sheriff’s deputy was collecting shotgun and .223-caliber ballistics evidence soon after in the darkness, the same truck cruised past the house. The driver fled as the deputy followed in pursuit with lights flashing. A second deputy blocked the road with a patrol car to end the chase. The Linn County law enforcement report on the incident said a “noticeably intoxicated” Brownback leapt out through one of the truck’s back doors. He informed officers nobody in the vehicle had a shotgun. The report says the driver, 20-year-old Tyler Agler, revealed a pair of shotguns were in the cab. Agler was Kara Jo Earnest's boyfriend. A defiant Brownback, the report added, swore to deputies no shotguns would be found in the truck. He lied. During a search of the vehicle, two shotguns were pulled by deputies from a back seat that had been occupied by the governor’s brother. Officers located a .223-caliber AR-15 in the back and a .308-caliber AR-15 in the front. They found an empty Wolf-brand .223 ammunition box. Casings retrieved from the road at the Peines’ house and one chambered in an AR-15 inside the vehicle were manufactured by Wolf. “I asked Brownback if they had been shooting and he said, ‘No,’ ” said Linn County Deputy Chris Martin. “He then said they had just come from some farm ground he owned and that they had been shooting shotguns and they shot up all of their ammo. I asked where the farm was and he pointed to the northeast.” “I asked him why, if they were coming from the farm, they were on Baskerville Road south of 1900 Road,” Martin said. “Brownback said they were just driving around in the country on their way home.” In other words, their indirect route to the Brownback place inadvertently passed in front of the Peines’ house. Officers concluded in the report Jim Brownback should be arrested for criminal discharge of a firearm at an occupied dwelling. The Peines were told the department’s evidence had to be sent to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation’s laboratory for analysis. The sheriff’s office warned it might take 18 months to finish testing. Joann Peine accepted that timeline and marked May 12, 2014, on a calendar. “I prayed for that day to arrive. I was going to get justice,” she said. “That was going to be my miracle day because it was going to go away.” Case misfires Despite assurances by Linn County Undersheriff Greg Jackson of certain prosecution of Jim Brownback, Joann Peine said she was eventually told by the sheriff’s department that evidence in the case had been “lost.” It was profoundly disappointing to the Peines, and tarnished their wavering faith in the legal system. “We have taken the high road,” Joann Peine said. “We have let law enforcement take care of it.” Filla, who took office as sheriff after being elected in 2012, said his officers conducted a professional inquiry and presented a worthy case to County Attorney John Sutherland. He said Filla’s deputies were told by Sutherland not to send material from the scene to the KBI. “You should talk to the prosecutor,” Filla said. “We do the investigative work. It’s not just for Brownback. It’s any case we submit. Our job is to look at things in black and white unrelated to names. There’s not a Brownback statute. There isn’t.” Sutherland, who works out of a small building in Mound City next to the sheriff’s department, said he didn’t recall participating in the decision to bypass KBI examination of ballistics evidence in the Brownback case. He said the judgment may have reflected lack of direct proof placing Jim Brownback in the truck or of him pulling a trigger at the time the vehicle passed the Peines’ residence. He said no witness could attest to shots being fired at the family’s house or that the structure had been hit by bullet or pellet. Sutherland, a Republican who sought appointment by the governor as a district court judge, said accusations by critics that he evaluated cases based on partisan politics were nonsense. Comments attributed to Jim Brownback indicating the governor’s brother was immune from accountability in the county’s criminal justice system were “baloney,” the prosecutor said. “I don’t think there is any movement to keep any embarrassment off the governor,” Sutherland said. Parker royalty The Brownback siblings — Sam, Jim, Alan and Mary — were born into a family that drew upon the legacy of several generations with deep roots in eastern Kansas. The farm operated by their parents, Robert and Nancy, on outskirts of Parker included 800 acres of wheat, soybeans and corn along with hogs and cattle. It was a childhood centered on chores and leveraged with school, church, sports, 4-H and Future Farmers of America. “Work hard, treat your neighbors fairly, pitch in where you can when somebody needs help, whether it’s a friend or a stranger, and do your best to be a good person,” Sam Brownback advised in his political biography, “From Power to Purpose,” published in 2007 while seeking the Republican presidential nomination. The place of his youth is intensely Republican. GOP candidates for statewide office typically outrun Democrats in Linn County 3-to-1 at the polls — if a Democrat possesses the nerve to run. President Barack Obama fared poorly in Linn County. The governor explained in the book that opportunities to get away with mischief were limited in his boyhood hometown. If a person did something out of step, he said, word got around quickly. Parker still has fewer than 300 residents, and this sense of intimacy hasn’t changed much in decades. “That’s why the culture is so important, because if our culture honors goodness, it encourages virtue and benevolence,” the politician in the family continued. “If the culture silences goodness in the name of tolerance and celebrates vice instead of virtue, it enables and encourages wickedness. We reap what we sow.” Jim, 56, chose farming as a career. Alan operates a veterinary practice in Lyndon. Sam, of rural Topeka, traveled a trajectory to the U.S. House and U.S. Senate in Washington, D.C. He returned in 2011 after winning the campaign for governor. In January, he began a second term at the Capitol. Their parents, Nancy and Robert, are highly regarded in Linn County. Even among those frustrated by antics of their youngest son or politics of the governor, there is reluctance to tarnish the stature of an esteemed couple viewed as salt-of-the-earth people. “I’ve always been a supporter of Sam. I’ve known Jim my entire life,” said Mike Page, who is chairman of the Linn County Commission and grew up about 1 mile from the Brownbacks’ homestead. “If you were to look up in a dictionary under what type of neighbors you’d want, Bob and Nancy fit that definition. How Jim fell out of that, I don’t know. “I think out of respect for them, there may have been some things let go by the community.” Death threat Ron Peine, brother-in-law to Joann, was easing his way through supper about 8 p.m. at Duffy’s Bar & Grill. The restaurant, still known to locals by its former name Greeley Cafe, is a narrow stone-walled establishment on Brown Street with comfortable booths, tables and a bar. Customers pass a wooden totem standing guard on the town’s main drag dotted with unused storefronts. It was the first week of May, and Jim Brownback stepped inside. Ron Peine offered a customary greeting. “You know, a small town. You know everybody. I asked Jim how it goes,” Ron Peine said. The reply had more in common with a saloon altercation in a B-grade western film than boilerplate chatter at a diner. “He paused a minute and he asked me why I was driving by his house,” Ron Peine said. “He did not smile.” He answered that he didn’t understand what Jim Brownback was talking about. “He wouldn’t let it go,” Ron Peine said. “He said he had a .410 bullet that had my name on it if I drove by again.” Joann Peine found irony in the threat. She said her journals were flecked with examples of Jim Brownback making use of that gambit. Running a finger down the pages, she landed on a note about videotaping Jim Brownback as his vehicle crawled past her house three times June 13 after at least one shot was fired south of her home. On July 3, she said, Jim Brownback paused in front of her house to flip off members of her family. He was back at it on Independence Day. The green-eyed, 6-foot Jim Brownback insisted Ron Peine choose alternative routes that avoided his homestead. Ron Peine, who runs a rock quarry and farm-service business in Anderson County, said he remained puzzled by timbre of the exchange. “It was all serious,” he said. “He had everybody in that cafe’s attention.” When the cafe had Brownback’s to-go order ready, he paid and departed. Ron Peine was urged by others to report the threat to law enforcement. He said he decided to forgo a 911 call because he was well aware of the Brownbacks’ cachet and didn’t want to heighten problems for Jim Brownback’s neighbors in Linn County. “I let it go,” he said. “I didn’t want to cause more trouble.” Legal wrangling Paola attorney Lee Tetwiler had more than one occasion to experience the Jim Brownback persona. The lawyer represented Jim Brownback’s first wife, Marsha, in a divorce case that percolated for years because of his reluctance to pay child support. A bench warrant was issued for Jim Brownback’s arrest in 2005, a reflection of the fact he was $6,657 in arrears and failed to adhere to a judge’s instruction to personally come to the courthouse to make monthly payments. In 2006, court records show, Jim Brownback was arrested again because he owed more than $5,000 due his two children from that marriage. His girlfriend and eventual second wife, Vickie, signed a document forfeiting that amount if he didn’t appear in court during July. He was there and paid the debt in full by check, all $5,386.50. “He drives around drunk with a gun in the truck,” Tetwiler said. “He’s truly the black sheep of the family. You’re not going to find anybody who has a kind word to say about him.” Brownback’s first wife declined to be interviewed for this story, he said, “because she’s too afraid of Jim.” This period was volatile for Jim Brownback for another reason: Two Kansas banks sent a platoon of lawyers after him when he defaulted on huge loans. He borrowed $1 million from Guaranty State Bank and Trust Co. of Beloit in August 2005 — Promissory Note No. 66402-01. By October 2006, Brownback liquidated cattle used as collateral but still owed on the loan. A judge in Mitchell County declared Brownback in default in March 2007. He was ordered to pay $220,000. Brownback didn’t comply right away. He moved on to a deal with Kaw Valley Bank in Topeka, which lent him $440,000 in May 2007 to purchase cattle. Tracts of land in Linn and Anderson counties served as collateral. Brownback failed to repay that loan as agreed in May 2008. As Kaw Valley’s foreclosure case was grinding through the legal system, his unpaid obligation ballooned to $500,000. With a stroke of a pen in May 2008, however, Guaranty State affirmed the defendant’s debt had been satisfied. Brownback maneuvered out of the Kaw Valley jam, too. “We got that refinanced,” Jim Brownback said. Political tension Tetwiler also was hired by Joann Peine to assist in acquiring restraining orders against Brownback and his stepdaughter Earnest. Peine claimed Jim Brownback defense attorney Ronald Wood said the most important element of the case from the Brownbacks’ perspective was maintenance of a positive perception of the governor. “He told my attorney this isn’t about Jim,” Joann Peine said. “He said, ‘This is about Sam’s public image.’ ” “I wouldn’t have said that to Lee,” said Wood, of Louisburg. “I never got any call from the governor. I’ve never met the governor.” Wood said he had hoped the restraining order would diminish friction among neighbors, because when “you have alcohol, guns and emotions — that’s when accidents happen.” Tetwiler said he didn’t recall a conversation with Wood that conformed to Joann Peine’s assertion, but could imagine Wood jokingly suggesting someone might try to disrupt the GOP governor’s re-election bid by exposing discord associated with Jim Brownback. During a 2014 farm dinner, Jim Brownback chatted with neighbor Bryant Kunard. Joann Peine said Kunard, who didn’t consent to an interview, revealed to her content of the conversation between Kunard and Jim Brownback. She said Jim Brownback told Kunard at least one member of the Brownback clan sought to tamp down the fracas. Joann Peine said Kunard attributed the following to Jim Brownback: “My brother told me I had to behave and leave my neighbors alone until after the election.” In November, Sam Brownback celebrated a capstone ballot-box triumph with family and friends. He wouldn’t face the indignity of being a one-term governor. About midnight on Election Day, someone at Jim Brownback’s house opened fire with a burst from a heavy weapon. The shooter followed the rhythm of a wristwatch by launching a round every 5 minutes until law enforcement responded to noise-complaint calls at 12:45 a.m. Tetwiler said Brownback’s aggression was unlikely to dissolve. The attorney’s prognosis is fatalistic. “It’s a drive-by waiting to happen,” Tetwiler said. “From the Peines’ point of view, they are out there alone at Jim’s mercy.” Jim Brownback said Tetwiler had a long history of involvement in the Democratic Party and partisanship had infected his perspective of the Brownbacks. Stolen cattle Farmer Ben Katzer, who counts the Brownback patriarch among his longtime friends, said he placed a group of 10 cattle ready to calve in a 40-acre pasture surrounded on three sides by acreage controlled by Jim Brownback in April 2012. Overnight, somebody convinced two of Katzer’s livestock to cross a road into Brownback’s pasture. A neighbor called Katzer to suggest something strange was going on because several of Katzer’s cattle were wandering in the road around dawn. All the pasture gates were shut. Vehicle tracks were left in mud leading to Brownback’s property. “I saw Jim and I said, ‘Jim, I got two heifers over on yours,’ ” Katzer said. “'I wonder if I could stop and get them out?’ ” “I’ll get them in later this fall,” Brownback replied, according to Katzer. “I’ll call you.” Katzer tried unsuccessfully to drive the duo back where they belonged. He subsequently notified the Linn County Sheriff’s Department in Mound City. The sheriff’s office, Katzer said, asked Mark Drennan, a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper on friendly terms with the Brownback family, to speak informally with Jim Brownback. Drennan cautioned Brownback that individuals stealing livestock worth thousands of dollars typically faced arrest, Katzer said. “The sheriff called me and said, ‘Jim Brownback will be contacting you shortly.’ I haven’t heard from Jim.” A spokesman with the state highway patrol had no comment on Drennan’s involvement in that unresolved case. And Jim Brownback said it was Katzer’s fault the livestock were never retrieved. Later that same year, a portion of Jim Brownback’s cattle went on a feeding frenzy in Katzer’s soybean field. Brownback agreed to have an insurance adjuster estimate the financial damage, Katzer said. “He tells the adjuster they’d only been in there one time and, besides, ‘Two of them were Ben’s.’ He’s aware of the fact the cows were mine. There’s no secret, but there’s no getting them back,” Katzer said. Katzer and other stockmen said Jim Brownback’s specialty was acquisition of stressed cattle at low prices. The portion that survived to maturity would be sent to market. Those that didn’t would often perish from lack of nutrition or veterinary care, area farmers said. Brownback once deposited a truckload of carcasses on property 1 mile south of his home. He used a front-loader to pile and bury the fallen in dirt mounds created in his feedlot. “Those calves go walking up on those mounds and pretty soon you’ll see legs poking out,” Katzer said. Ronnie Sommer, who lived with his wife, Patricia, on property east of Jim Brownback’s home and west of land owned by the governor, recalled a sick bull belonging to Jim was too ill to walk to food and water. It was left to flounder on the ground. Sommer said Jim Brownback showed no interest in caring for the bull or putting the animal out of its misery. “This bull laid there for days,” he said. “(Jim Brownback) said insurance would pay for it.” Showdown Katzer and Sommer said they weren’t wantonly discussing turmoil capable of embarrassing members of the Brownback family. Both said they concluded it was time to stand against Jim Brownback’s onslaught. They are convinced the Brownback family has an awareness of the man’s challenges. “I’ll run into him at the Greeley liquor store and ask how it’s going,” Sommer said. “His only reply is, ‘Staying one step ahead of the law.’ ” Sommer and Katzer said what transpired in August 2013 helped convince them of the necessity to go public. About 8:30 p.m. on a summer evening, more than a dozen shots rang out near the north side of the Peines’ property. That’s where their beef cattle were grazing. The oldest Peine children, Trint and Justin, left to see who was discharging firearms. Their mother called 911. The boys let their parents know they discovered vehicle tracks in the Peines’ bean field. “Bob and I drove up there to see what had happened,” Joann Peine said. Brownback stepdaughter Kara Jo Earnest roared up in an all-terrain vehicle. She hurled obscenities and tossed a beer can to the ground. Earnest, law enforcement reports say, proposed a truce applicable to Joann’s husband, Robert, and their three children, but stated, “It is your wife I am going to get.” Robert Peine said he demanded an explanation as to why Earnest persisted in tormenting his family. He said she stepped onto the Peines’ land in defiance and declared, “What you going to do about it?” In the melee, Jim Brownback and his wife, Vickie, rolled up. The solution proposed by Jim Brownback, Robert Peine said, was for the men to head up to the house and knock down a few beers while the women fought each other to a suitable conclusion. Amid the shouting, Earnest grabbed Joann Peine’s arm. She was able to twist free from her grasp. One of the Peines’ sons began screaming: “Don’t let them shoot us. Don’t let them kill us.” The report by the sheriff’s department indicated both Brownbacks, Earnest and Earnest’s boyfriend, Agler, appeared intoxicated. Jim Brownback told a deputy he fired about 30 shots at coyotes that day with Agler. When dust settled, Earnest was charged with assault, trespassing and littering. She applied for and received a diversion to avoid prosecution. Sheriff’s office Anderson County Sheriff Vern Valentine said individuals frustrated by response of the Linn County Sheriff's Department turned to him for help. Specifically, the concern was Jim Brownback’s use of high explosives at his residence on the Linn-Anderson county line. “We’ve had calls about explosions, but that’s Linn County. It’s not my jurisdiction,” Valentine said. “I called the ATF and they said there was nothing we could do about it. I wish there was.” The task of investigating layers of this conflict was initially the responsibility of Barry Walker, who was sheriff in Linn County. Walker lost re-election in 2012 to Filla. After the transition, Walker made startling headlines by pleading guilty to a charge of illegally selling firearms at his Big Bear’s Gifts & Pawn Shop in Pleasanton. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison in February. When Filla was sworn into office, Joanne Peine and others shared optimism the sheriff’s department would stiffen its resolve. Peine said she wasn’t alone in feeling disappointed by performance of the new regime as it related to Jim Brownback. Joann Peine said she also attempted to interest the KBI, FBI, KHP and Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt’s office in the case, but found none willing to step forward. “Law enforcement, including the Linn County Sheriff’s Department and the Kansas Highway Patrol, act on the behalf of Sam instead of enforcing the law,” she said. Hit and run Regina and Dwayne Broyles, of Blue Mound, were driving through Parker on West 2100 Road at 8:30 p.m. July 17 when they came upon a flatbed farm truck sitting in the middle of the road. It had a big liquid tank on top — just like Jim Brownback’s. “I was just waiting,” Broyles said. “He put it in reverse and backed into me. I had my horn on all the time. He pulled forward and then drove off.” She pulled her Chevrolet Equinox, which sustained $2,800 in damage, off the road and called the sheriff’s department. Before an officer arrived, she said, two men walked over. They told Broyles the driver was Jim Brownback, but the men wouldn’t disclose that information to an investigator at the scene. She is skeptical anyone will be held accountable for the strange collision — her first car accident in more than four decades. “The law doesn’t apply,” she said. “Something bad is really going to happen if he’s not stopped.” Jim Brownback said he wasn’t behind the wheel of the truck involved in the Parker crash. He said he routinely left keys in the truck and was on vacation at time of the accident. It is possible a relative was driving his vehicle that night, he said. Sheriff Filla, who arrested Jim Brownback years ago in a child-support case, said that truck wasn’t unfamiliar to law enforcement. He said Linn County deputies hadn’t caught him driving under the influence, but it didn’t stem from reluctance to set a trap. He said officers had staked out roads near Jim Brownback’s house in anticipation he would get behind the wheel while intoxicated, but he didn’t show on those occasions. “If I ever catch Jim drinking and driving, I’ll arrest him on the spot because that’s Kansas state statute requirement,” the sheriff said. “Just because it’s the governor’s brother doesn’t stop me from doing what I’ve got to do. In fact, he knows that, because I’ve talked to him about it. “He hasn’t crossed the line, but I guess he walks on it.” A child's view Fifth-grader Chaylin Peine, the youngest son of Joann and Robert, wrote a two-page paper this spring for a class assignment at Parker Elementary School. He never referred to Jim Brownback by name, but text of “Neighbor Trouble” left no doubt who the author cast as villain. The boy put down why his family ought to model their behavior after Hall of Fame baseball player Jackie Robinson, who flourished despite ruthless harassment by people upset when the Brooklyn Dodger broke the color line in 1947. “My neighbor has done a lot of terrible things to my family,” Chaylin wrote. “This situation has made me scared and frustrated. His behavior stresses out my family, because we never know what he is going to do. We have thought about moving, but my dad likes where we live. It is not fair for us to have to move our home just because of one person’s actions.” He said the best approach was to stick close to nonviolent principles embraced by Robinson. Vigilantism, even when tacitly sanctioned by some as frontier justice, can’t correct what is broken, he said. “It has gotten worse, but we are still hopeful that it will end. If you ever find yourself in this situation, I advise you to be cautious and do what is right.” Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 10.
#2. To: Willie Green, GarySpFc, TooConservative, liberator (#0)
This is the third hit piece you have posted on Kansas in the past week. Did you move to a Kansas commune with WiFi?
I know plenty of libs from Kansas . Oh how they hate Sam Brownback because of the reforms he's brought to the state ! He's probably as hated by the left in Kansas as Scott Walker is in Wisconsin. It doesn't surprise me at all that they would try to get him by going after his family .
My reading is that Brownback has really gone a long ways on tax cut ideology. No matter how much they cut taxes, they never seem to actually reduce the size and scope of state government or the mandates they place on local government agencies and entities. Sometimes it seems there is not possible to have a smaller and less intrusive government. When will any of them reduce the size of the gooberment trough and chase the hogs away?
Brownback is proving that "trickle down" economics is a hoax...
#11. To: Willie Green (#10)
As so often, I don't fault the GOP for wanting to cut taxes. My bigger criticism is that they should cut taxes and the size of government. Also, they typically fail at managing essential government functions poorly and weeding out the bad employees (and bad programs that favor connected donors). You should cut size of government, improve its core competencies in essential services, and only then cut the taxes.
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