Missouri is building a state-of-the-art multi-agency state laboratory in Jefferson City. The $151 million project is expected to break ground this month.

Headed by Gov. Mike Parson, the planned campus will be home to several state agencies to provide a singular approach to human, animal, environmental, and criminal testing in Missouri. The new approach will enable the different government agencies to share information, expertise, equipment, supplies, and support services.

This will include the Forensic Crime Laboratory, which will provide forensic evidence testing. It will also provide crime and criminal activity verification for the state and over 600 local law enforcement agencies.

The state Department of Health and Senior Services will be providing investigative and testing services related to public health and disease, according to director Paula Nickelson.

“The opportunity for forensics as well as scientists who concentrate on environment, animals, and humans to come together is very unique,” she said. “We will be one of only three or four in the nation. We will be the only one in the Midwest that has that capacity all under one roof.”

“We are going to build state of the art facilities in this state,” Gov. Parson said. “We’re going to build the best of the best right here in Missouri. We’re going to build a lab that is second to none in the United States.”

The NEW State Health Lab consolidation will help to improve government efficiency without sacrificing the security & integrity of either lab. We’re excited for these new developments that will help improve interagency partnership and local agency collaboration. pic.twitter.com/eB7a6cOd53

— Governor Mike Parson (@GovParsonMO) June 27, 2024

Today, we joined the @MDC_online, @MoAgriculture, @HealthyLivingMo, Missouri Department of Natural Resources, and @MoPublicSafety to participate in a groundbreaking for the new state crime and health labs. pic.twitter.com/0OT4JMHrIQ

— Governor Mike Parson (@GovParsonMO) June 27, 2024

Missouri’s Agriculture Director, Chris Chinn, said the future 250,000-square-foot lab is key to the state’s livestock industries.

“Missouri is a powerhouse in livestock production,” she explained. “We’re the number three cow state in the United States, but we’re also top ten when it comes to pigs, goats, poultry, horses, the list just goes on. This laboratory is very crucial to make sure that Missouri’s farmers and ranchers can continue to produce a safe and abundant food supply.”

Missouri Department of Natural Resources Director Dru Buntin said his department provides investigative and laboratory testing for environmental health and disease.

“This new lab will strengthen and expand our services in four key areas – air, water quality monitoring, chemical analysis, and environmental emergency response.” he said.

About $183 million in federal pandemic funds have been designated for the new campus and for work to the existing State Public Health Lab.

The multi-story project is expected to finish in October of 2026.

Click here for more information.

© 2024, Missourinet.

Four Missouri prison cops were charged Friday with murder, and a fifth with involuntary manslaughter, in the December execution of Othel Moore Jr., a 38-year-old brother at Jefferson City Correctional Center. 

The prison cops restrained Othel with a full-body torture contraption, covered him with a hood and a mask, and repeatedly attacked him with chemical weapons. Witnesses reported Moore pleading for his life. 

An Eyewitness Describes the Gang-Style Torture Execution, Causing Surge of Terror Throughout MO Prisons

“I never watched anybody die before,” Jordan Seller, a former prisoner at the facility who was an eyewitness to Moore’s murder told CNN. 

The nightmarish horror began with what was supposed to be a routine cell search on the maximum-security block. “They come in like a hundred deep, and that’s barely an exaggeration,” Seller recounted. “They try to pull everybody out as fast as they can, search the cells as fast as they can, and get out.”

Seller and his cellmate had already been pulled out and put back in their cell when they saw the commotion around Moore’s cell. “The cell was surrounded by COs,” he said. Moore was begging for his life, saying he had a medical lay-in and needed two pairs of handcuffs to ease the tension on his shoulders.

An attorney for Moore’s family, Andrew Stroth, has said Moore had blood coming out of his ears and nose. 

“Immediately he’s jumping, hopping, and you can hear him screaming, ‘Help! I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe, take it off. I can’t breathe. I’m allergic to mace. I need help.’ And then it gets worse and worse,” Seller described. “He’s jumping up and down, shaking. Slowly, his screams are getting weaker and weaker. I believe I watched him die before they even took him out of the wing.”

“From our perspective, it’s George Floyd 3.0, in prison,” the civil rights attorney representing the Moore family told KOMU 8 on Friday. “We’re demanding release of all the video.”

What is CERT? The State-Sanctioned Gang That Carried Out the Torture Killing

The officers who killed Othel Moore Jr. were part of a so-called “Corrections Emergency Response Team (CERT),” which I will instead refer to as a Prison Terror Squad (PTS). PTS are tactically trained prison cops that operate like a prison-specific SWAT team. 

During mass searches, they swarm in overwhelming numbers, often hundreds deep, descending upon unarmed and helpless prisoners in the dead of night. They claim to maintain order; but their true purpose is to instill terror, inflict asymmetrical violence, and assert domination. 

CERT’s presence implies violence, creating a culture of constant terror within the prison system.

Prison or Concentration Facility? MO State-Sanctioned Killings Reach Unprecedented Rates

In 2024, the Missouri so-called Department of Corrections saw a sharp increase to a staggering 13 deaths per month, an increase from the last several years’ average of 11 per month.

These executions must be understood as acts of terror intended to strike sustained fear, domination, and control over the general populace of incarcerated comrades. The number of brothers who died while in custody last year was over 150—that’s about five times the number of United States soldiers killed in 2022.

Abolition Now: The Only Just Response

Any institution that regularly allows, enables, and even incentivizes such brutish, horrifying violence against humans—trapping them in cages, herding them, shocking them with shock gloves, spraying them with chemical weapons, asphyxiating and strangling them, depriving them of essential medical needs, infringing on their human rights, keeping them in sweltering heat over 100 degrees in the height of summer, beating and torturing—are not rehabilitation centers; they are concentration facilities.

It is incumbent upon all of us to see the horror of what happened to Othel not as a happenstance or aberration but, as the Missouri Justice Coalition described, “usual and commonplace” for MO prisons to act in this way.

This is not reformable. We must stand in solidarity with our comrades on the inside and demand abolition now!

The department’s own investigation and the firing of ten individuals involved in the incident are mere smokescreens to cover the fact these facilities are far closer to concentration camps than they are rehabilitative institutions.

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) – The National Weather Service said the Missouri River crested at just under 33 feet Saturday morning.

So far, the Pottawattamie County Emergency Management Agency reported no updates in flood-related efforts since then.

They told 6 News their overnight crews encouraged several people to get out of the floodwater near the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge.

They weren’t alone.

Council Bluffs Police said they received a report of three people paddling upstream in a canoe beneath the pedestrian bridge.

Elsewhere, after this week’s high winds, the Omaha and Lincoln affiliates of the nonprofit group Rapid Response cut down and cleared out tree limbs for residents in the Florence neighborhood.

“They were a true blessing,” Lita Craddick said. “I was so amazed. I was so uplifted and I was overwhelmed almost.”

Craddick said she was faced with having to get estimates and not knowing what homeowner’s insurance would cover.

That was before Rapid Response swooped in.

“Such a blessing,” Craddick said. “I was just totally in shock. I’m like, ‘No way.’”

Rapid Response teams are still helping clean up debris from April’s tornadoes, and they’re planning to help out with flood cleanup after the waters go down.

But it was important for them to help Florence homeowners Saturday.

“We talk to so many people, have so much work to do, so many jobs to do,” said Beth Sorensen, director of the Lincoln affiliate. “So we have to kind of prioritize which ones we’re going to do first. And in this neighborhood, with all these limbs on roofs and things, this was the priority today.”

Rapid Response said it’s badly in need of volunteers, including experienced chainsaw and skid-steer loader operators.

If you would like to help out, click here.

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