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A 25-year-old male was taken into custody Sunday afternoon after local law enforcement responded to a report of a gunshot victim in rural Seward County.
In a press release, Sheriff Gene Ward said the call came in around 3 p.m. Sunday, and along with the sheriff’s office, Seward County Rural Fire, Seward County EMS and the Liberal Police Department also responded to the report at 15143 Denoon Road.
There are many stray animals wandering throughout Liberal and the City of Liberal recently began an effort to help with just that.
Starting at the beginning of the month, the city’s new pet registration ordinance went into effect, and city officials say the work has been a long time coming.
“I remember it coming before the Liberal City Commission in the summer of 2024, and that's when it all started being formulated and discussed in a public setting,” Interim City Manager Scarlette Diseker said. “The Animal Control Ordinance was passed at the commission's April 23, 2024 meeting and discussed again at the commission's May 14, 2024 meeting, with the overall consensus being the commission wishing to keep moving forward with the pet licensing project. We'd had several people attending meetings and expressing concern over stray dogs, which has been a problem in Liberal for quite some time now, and the commission wanted to do something to combat the problem while helping the Liberal Animal Shelter staff, who had also expressed some concern about the issue.”
Not wanting to see diversion funds collected by the Meade County Sheriff’s Department sent to the state level, in 2019, a group of community members in that county formed a community foundation.
Cheyenne Federau, executive director of what is now the Meade County Community Foundation, said those funds were sent to the state because there was not a county organization where they could be sent.
A community’s emergency personnel works hard throughout the year, and 2024 kept Liberal Police Department officers busy, according to Liberal Police Chief Chet Pinkston.
“Overall, 2024 was a good year for the LPD. We saw an improvement in our staffing numbers – we hire some people, but not all of them work out, but we did end up hiring more people than we lost for this year, which is the opposite of what we saw in 2023,” Pinkston said. “Going into the start of 2024, we down 25 to 30 percent on staffing and we even have employees who stay for a few years but end up transitioning out due to other opportunities and/or other circumstances. So overall, 2024 was a good year in terms of staffing. We also put a significant emphasis on recruiting, which ended up taking us out of state, and we pulled applicants from California, Colorado, Texas and Oklahoma, so we went rather far and wide in that regard. For the most part, I would say 2024 was pretty on par with what we've experienced the past few years with only some minor variations as far as our numbers go. One of the things that's particularly problematic for us, especially when we're short-staffed, is it seems we have no time for breaks and we're constantly going from call to call to call. We were fortunate, since I've started here, for the Seward County Sheriff's Department to step in and give some help when we're in a bit of a bind, which is a huge benefit. But the call load has been pretty much consistent with what we've already seen.”
People finding themselves on both ends of the job hunt will soon have the chance to come together thanks to the Liberal Chamber of Commerce.
The annual Southwest Kansas Regional Job Fair will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 28, at the Seward County Activity Center at 810 Stadium Road. Businesses can come in that day from 8 to 10 a.m. to set up their booths, and then will be able to meet everyone else during the event.
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