Governor Holcomb grants clemency to terminal convicted drug offender
Indiana Governor Holcomb granted clemency to Tommy Alsman, who was convicted in 2019 for dealing methamphetamine in Posey County. Alsman, who has served 3 and a half years of his 10-year sentence, was recently diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor (stage 4), Clemency was sought on Alsman’s behalf. by the Indiana Department of Correction, through the warden and in agreement with the Commissioner and Chief Medical Officer, and the Indiana Parole Board unanimously recommended the sentence commutation.
The official Order can be viewed here.
Teams from four states attend Indiana Conservation Officer K-9 School
This week the DNR Division of Law Enforcement’s K-9 Resource Protection Program kicked off its nine-week training school at Atterbury Fish and Wildlife Area in Johnson County. This year’s school has a total of six K-9 teams attending from Indiana, Kansas, Oregon, and Utah.
Indiana’s K-9 program started in 1997 with a pilot program of two teams. Because of its effectiveness, the program grew to a team of 13 K-9 units throughout the state. At least one K-9 unit serves in each of the 10 Indiana DNR Law Enforcement districts. The Indiana K-9 program is not only well respected in the Hoosier state, but also is recognized as one of the top programs in the nation. In addition to the states represented in this year’s school, Indiana has also helped start and train teams from natural resource agencies in Idaho, Kentucky, Maryland, Virginia, Washington, and the African country of Zambia.
The Indiana K-9 program trains teams in human-tracking, wildlife detection and article searches. All canines are trained to locate white-tailed deer, wild turkey, waterfowl, and ginseng. They may also be trained to locate other species, depending on where the handler is stationed. Indiana teams excel in man-tracking and locating firearms.
K-9 teams provide conservation officers an essential tool to help stop poaching. In the past 25 years, Indiana K-9 teams have been involved in thousands of such cases. K-9 teams have been used to find concealed game and guns, as well as to find shell casings in road hunting and hunting-with-a-spotlight cases. K-9 teams are used to find lost hunters as well as poachers who have tried to hide from officers. Because of their unique abilities, K-9 units are often requested by other state and local law enforcement agencies for help in locating evidence, missing persons, or fleeing felons.
Trial Court strikes down annexation remonstrators’ request for extra signature time
Special Judge Nathan Nikirk denied the request for a second 90-day remonstrance period from residents in Bloomington’s Proposed Annexation Areas 1A and 1B. Judge Nikirk issued the ruling in County Residents Against Annexation v. the City of Bloomington. Last March, remonstrators in annexation Areas 1A and 1B filed suit challenging Bloomington’s annexation of those areas. As part of their lawsuit, the remonstrators claimed that the Court should grant them a second 90-day period to collect remonstrance signatures. The original three-month remonstrance period ran from October 8, 2021, through January 6, 2022. The trial court rejected the remonstrators’ request for a second 90-day period and emphasized the precautions and increased access that the City and County governments provided to residents during the remonstrance period.
This Week in Hoosier History
1809 – The qualifications for voting set the Northwest Ordinance were liberalized by the act of February 26, 1808. In an act of February 27, 1809, the qualified electors were authorized to select the congressional delegate and the members of the legislative council who had formerly been appointed by the President from a list submitted by the lower house of the territorial legislature. The process of democratization was continued in the following act (March 3, 1811). Any free white male who could produce evidence of having paid a county or territorial tax was enfranchised.
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