DODGE CITY, Kansas (AP) — Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole is set to campaign with fellow Republican Pat Roberts in race that’s suddenly competitive for the three-term Kansas U.S. senator.
Dole planned to attend an event with Roberts Monday in Dodge City, where Roberts lists his residence but admits having visited only seven times this year. The pair also plans to attend events together Tuesday in heavily Republican western Kansas.
Having eked out victory in a GOP primary in August, Roberts finds himself locked in a tight race with Greg Orman, a businessman from the Kansas City suburbs running as an independent.
Roberts revamped his campaign team at the request of national Republican Party officials this month, when polls showed the race tight, and Roberts with little general election organization.
MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) — State and local officials in four Kansas counties are conducting an exercise to practice the state’s plan to respond to a foreign animal disease.
The state Department of Agriculture says the drill began Monday and continues through Wednesday. Emergency response teams from Clay, Lyon, Riley and Pottawatomie counties are taking part.
Agriculture officials said the exercise is based on a hypothetical case of foot-and-mouth disease, which was last identified in the U.S. in 1929. Foot-and-mouth is a highly contagious disease that affects cattle, sheep, swine and other cloven-hooved animals.
Kansas Agriculture Secretary Jackie McClaskey says the exercise will identify gaps in the state’s response plan and give state and local officials experience in carrying out the plan.
Lea Taylor, an assistant secretary for the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, says KDADS has been working with officials in Kansas communities that appear to have above-average numbers of residents with mental illness.-Photo by Dave Ranney
By Dave Ranney
KHI News Service
LAWRENCE — A Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services official said Thursday that the agency has identified 11 communities that appear to be referring inordinate numbers of patients to the state hospitals for mentally ill or have above-average numbers of inmates in the state’s correctional systems who are known to be mentally ill.
“We’ve been going out and meeting with people in those communities,” said KDADS Assistant Secretary Lea Taylor, addressing a statewide conference in Lawrence on law enforcement training and mental health crises.
The meetings, Taylor said, are meant to give leaders in those communities time to explore the possibility of applying for $425,000 in state-funded grants aimed at reducing the number of mentally ill adults ending up in jail, prison or the state-run hospitals in Larned or Osawatomie.
Taylor declined to identify the communities. KDADS, she said, will issue a formal request for grant proposals “in the next month or so.”
The application process, Taylor said, will be open to organizations – public and private, local and regional – throughout the state. A time frame for awarding the grants has not been decided.
The $425,000 is part of a $9.5 million mental health initiative announced by Gov. Sam Brownback in May.
KDADS on Tuesday unveiled its plan for spending $75,000 on training projects to help law enforcement officers respond to crisis calls involving the mentally ill.
KDADS, Taylor said, has been especially pleased with its conversion of Rainbow Mental Health Facility, a former 50-bed state hospital in Kansas City, to a privatized detox and crisis stabilization unit, and with the program’s success in reducing the numbers of Johnson and Wyandotte County patients being referred to Osawatomie State Hospital.
Since it opened in April, the new facility, now called Rainbow Services Inc., has diverted 262 would-be patients from area emergency rooms, 91 from Osawatomie State Hospital and 61 from jail, Taylor said.
“It seems to be working,” she said.
About 140 people – a mix of law enforcement officers, program directors and mental health advocates – attended the Kansas Crisis Intervention Training Summit, an annual event coordinated by the Kansas Chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center, Kansas Sheriff’s Association, Kansas Department of Corrections and KDADS.
Steve McCorkill, a sergeant with the Shawnee Police Department and president of the Kansas Law Enforcement CIT Council, led morning and afternoon sessions on processes for building local partnerships among law enforcement officers, mental health providers, and mental health consumers and their families.
“If jail is the best crisis-response resource that’s available to you, that’s a bigger problem than a law enforcement problem; that’s a societal issue,” McCorkill said. “And the best way to address societal issues on the law enforcement level is at the grassroots. That’s what CIT does, it builds coalitions that come up with solutions.”
McCorkill also asked the group to understand:
• “Mental illness does not excuse criminal activity.”
• “Officer safety is still ‘Job No. 1.’ If the officer isn’t safe, then nobody is safe.”
• “The biggest problem we have to deal with is overcoming stigma – the stigma that comes with having a mental illness, the stigma that comes with being taken to jail.”
• “Seven percent of the calls we get directly involve a mentally ill person. If you’re in law enforcement, you know that’s a lot.”
• “CIT will not prevent bad things from happening, but it will give the responding officers more resources.”
Mark Potter, men’s basketball coach at Newman University for the past 17 years, also addressed the conference. He discussed overcoming the stigma that accompanied his diagnosis of depression nine years ago.
“If we have a broken arm, we go to the doctor and get it fixed,” he said. “If we have diabetes, we go to the doctor to get it fixed. But if we have a mental illness – if our brain is broken – we don’t tell anyone. We don’t get it fixed. Why is that?”
OLATHE- A Kansas woman was injured in an accident just before 1:30 p.m. on Monday in Johnson County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2001 Peterbilt semi driven by Karl Dennis Knight, 63, Neosho, Mo., was southbound on Interstate 35 in Olathe.
The truck failed to maintain a lane and struck a 2005 Toyota Tacoma driven by Kathleen S. Dieckhoff, 54, Olathe, in the rear. The collision caused the Toyota to spin out of control and leave the roadway.
The semi then left the scene.
Dieckhoff was transported to Olathe Medical Center. Knight was not injured.
The KHP reported both drivers were properly restrained at the time of the accident.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Educators and parents chosen to rewrite learning benchmarks for Missouri children are divided on how to move forward.
Work groups tasked with writing new education standards spent their first meeting Monday clashing over the state education department’s involvement and how to rework the national goals currently in place.
A law passed in May requires new goals for learning in each grade to replace the standards adopted in the Common Core. Those standards are used to create consistency between states, but opponents say they were adopted without enough local input.
More than 40 states use the Common Core, but Missouri is one of several states backing away from it.
A Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education spokeswoman says the level of fighting over education standards is “unprecedented.”
TOPEKA – Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt today asked a state court to end a lawsuit challenging the school-funding law enacted in April by the Legislature.
Schmidt filed the motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which was filed in August by the Kansas National Education Association (KNEA), in Shawnee County District Court in Topeka. The filing is the State’s first formal response to the lawsuit.
“At its core, KNEA disagrees with the Legislature’s policy choice to amend the Kansas statutes regarding teacher dismissal and termination of teacher contracts,” Schmidt wrote in his filing. “Rather than attack that issue directly, the KNEA raises an abstract challenge to the process by which the Legislature enacted the law.”
Schmidt argues that the KNEA lacks standing to challenge the law, that no actual controversy has yet arisen under the new law, and that the education bill enacted by the Legislature complies with the state Constitution’s requirement that each bill contain only a single subject.
Allowing the lawsuit to proceed, Schmidt argues, could put in jeopardy more than $134 million in K-12 spending that was provided by the new law. That spending is being used in schools throughout Kansas during the current school year.
The case is Kansas National Education Association v. State of Kansas, et al., in the District Court of Shawnee County, Kansas, Case No. 2014-CV-789.
SEYBERT (AP) – The Missouri State Highway Patrol said a southwest Missouri man has been missing since he went fishing on Stockton Lake during the weekend.
Searchers were still looking Monday for 61-year-old Rodney David of Golden City. The search began Friday evening when his empty boat was found circling in northeast Dade County between Greenfield and Stockton.
KYTV reported the area is known locally as Chicken Rock because of a big bluff where people dive and jump into the water.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Jackson County judge says a 34-year-old man accused of fatally shooting three people and brutally beating two others who later died will be allowed to wear street clothes during his courtroom appearances.
Brandon Howell is facing a dozen charges in the Sept. 2 attacks, including three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of 88-year-old Alice Hurst, her son, 63-year-old Darrel Hurst, and 69-year-old Susan Choucroun. Charges have not been updated in the beatings of George and Ann Taylor, who died after the other counts had been filed.
Howell appeared in court Monday wearing a blue pullover sweater and slacks, but no visible shackles. His attorney told Associate Judge Mary Weir the jury pool could be tainted if news stations repeatedly showed him in leg irons or other restraints.
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — Authorities in northeast Kansas have arrested a man suspected of firing a shot at a Johnson County sheriff’s deputy.
The deputy was unhurt in the shooting early Monday, which set off a massive search for more than 12 hours in the southern part of the county. The sheriff’s department says the suspect was arrested without incident several miles from where the confrontation occurred.
The deputy was investigating a reported break-in at a construction site when the suspect fired a shot before fleeing. Authorities said the deputy did not return fire.
Several schools in the Blue Valley district were placed on heightened alert during the search. Law enforcement officers patrolled bus stops during the morning.
FERGUSON (AP) – The city of Ferguson is hosting a five-week series of town hall meetings, but not everyone is welcome, including the media.
The meetings, announced last week, will address concerns raised after the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. The city said the meetings will update residents on changes the city council wants the community to consider.
The Justice Department has gotten involved and a spokesman for the city said the meetings will be closed to the media and nearly anyone else who is not a resident of the St. Louis suburb.
Ferguson spokesman Devin James told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service feels having media present could alter the conversations.
