KANSAS CITY– Two Kansas City brothers and a Sugar Creek, Missouri woman have been sentenced in federal court for their roles in a conspiracy to commit a series of armed robberies by luring their victims with online advertisements and ambushing them.

Dylan J. Houston, 22, his brother, Andrew J. Houston, 29, and Nicole Waguespack, also known as Nicole Covey, 36, were sentenced in separate appearances before U.S. District Judge Greg Kays on Thursday, Jan. 31, 2019.

Dylan Houston was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison without parole. Andrew Houston was sentenced to seven years and eight months in federal prison without parole. Waguespack was sentenced to four years and nine months in federal prison without parole. They are among 10 defendants who have been sentenced in this case. Two defendants have pleaded guilty and await sentencing.

Co-conspirators posted ads on several websites in order to entice customers to meet in person at area hotels, residences and apartments in Kansas City, Mo. When the customers arrived, co-conspirators were lying in wait, armed with firearms and weapons that appeared to be firearms. They ambushed and robbed the customers at gunpoint. They often committed more than one robbery in a night.

According to court documents, the proceeds of the robberies was divided up and usually used to pay for narcotics or to pay for a room where the co-conspirators could use narcotics. When confronting the victim, the co-conspirators used verbal threats, pointed real and fake guns at them, physically hit them, and intimidated them. Records obtained from social media services and hotels corroborate statements by participants that only a small percentage of the victims called the police to report their robbery.

Dylan Houston pleaded guilty on July 12, 2018, to his role in the armed robbery conspiracy as well as to three counts of armed robbery. According to court documents, Dylan Houston was one of the enforcers in this violent robbery scheme. Once a victim was led into a room, he surprised the victim and used firearms and threats of physical violence to intimidate him and take electronics and cash. Dylan Houston admitted that he participated in three armed robberies, including one robbery in which the victim, after being forced into his truck at gunpoint, later jumped out of the moving vehicle while driving at highway speeds, in fear for his life. In another robbery, Dylan Houston stole a firearm from a victim that was later used in subsequent robberies.

Andrew Houston pleaded guilty on July 11, 2018, to his role in the armed robbery conspiracy, as well as to three counts of armed robbery. Andrew Houston served as a look-out for multiple robberies, notifying co-defendants about the arrival of victims and watching for law enforcement response. He also shared in the proceeds from the robberies.

Waguespack pleaded guilty on May 3, 2017, to her role in the armed robbery conspiracy as well as to five counts of armed robbery. Waguespack created dozens of online ads designed to lure men to robberies. When victims arrived, she met the victims at the door. As part of the plan, she then excused herself to the restroom while the other co-conspirators surprised and robbed the victims with threats of violence and firearms.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is “absolutely not leaving” the Cabinet even as top Republicans make a pitch for him to run for the Senate in Kansas.

Pompeo served four terms in the House and was Trump’s CIA director before moving to the State Department.

The decision by longtime Republican Sen. Pat Roberts to retire has prompted an effort by other GOP senators to recruit Pompeo for 2020. He’s said that push has included a call from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Trump tells CBS’ “Face the Nation” that McConnell may have spoken to Pompeo but “I asked him the question the other day. He says he’s absolutely not leaving. I don’t think he’d do that. And he doesn’t want to be lame duck.”

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (AP) — Missouri license agents and several lawmakers want more funding to help rural license offices at risk of closing because of financial losses and limited state support.

Marble Hill didn’t have a license bureau for several years, forcing Bollinger County residents to travel to other cities to obtain or renew their driver’s licenses and license plate tags. Marian Hutchings opened a license bureau in the city in 2017 after winning a bid from the state, but she told the Southeast Missourian that she’s losing money and might not be able to keep the office open much longer.

“If I don’t have $200 a day, I am not paying my bills,” Hutchings said.

Republican Rep. Rick Francis said the state needs to change its rules or more communities could lose their license bureau. Francis has proposed legislation to allow small license offices to keep more of the revenue they collect.

He introduced a measure that would let license operators turn over less money to the state if the office collects less than $20,000 in transaction fees over a three-month period.

The proposal will help small offices without raising fees for the consumer, Francis said.

Republican Sen. Sandy Crawford proposed a bill that would increase the maximum fee for various license transactions from the current $2.50 or $3 rate to $6.

Gina Raffety operates four license offices in southeast Missouri and supports the $6 fee hike proposal.

“It has become more and more difficult because the profit margins are currently very low and get lower every year,” Raffety said.

She said the state used to cover most office expenses, but now the costs have been shifted onto license agents, who have to pay everything from paper and postage to toner.

Raffety and Hutchings both said that their license offices have to compete with the state’s online renewals, which eliminate the need for their businesses.

“If something doesn’t happen with the fees soon, I think you will see smaller offices close because the operating costs are too high to be profitable,” she said.

By MADELINE FOX

Nicole Nesmith’s voice shakes a little when she recalls the night her child, Phoenix, revealed a painful secret.

“Phoenix got really quiet and was like, ‘I have something to tell you and I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but I’ve been cutting for about a month now.’”

Nesmith was working on a social work degree, so she was familiar with self-harming — she just hadn’t expected to deal with it so close to home.

Phoenix’s confession started a cycle familiar to families who have kids with severe mental illness — therapy, crisis hospitalizations, medication, more therapy, new meds when the old ones stopped working well, more hospitalizations.

But in the fall of Phoenix’s freshman year of high school, even that exhausting pattern wasn’t enough.

“There was a two-week period when I really didn’t leave the house at all,” said Phoenix.

When kids are chronically in distress — suicidal, self-harming, harming others, running away repeatedly — there had been a place for them: psychiatric residential treatment facilities.

That’s where the community mental health center treating Phoenix sent the Nesmiths when the care it could offer no longer kept Phoenix stable.

Residential treatment centers take children for long periods of time — weeks, sometimes months — to do more than talk kids down from crisis. They work to get at the root causes of their distress and help patients develop coping mechanisms to better manage the stressful things that set off a crisis.

Cost-cutting measures

In 2011, the state decided Kansas was sending too many kids to residential facilities for too long. At $500 a day or more, it cost too much. The state pushed to divert kids from residential care and bring down the length of their stays.

That loss of business prompted many treatment facilities to close some or all of their beds, resulting in a sharp drop from nearly 800 spots for care to the current 282.

More changes swept through with Kansas’ privatization of Medicaid in 2013. Under KanCare, community mental health centers no longer decided whether kids needed residential treatment, as they had for Phoenix. Instead, that decision passed to the private companies managing Medicaid under KanCare.

In 2015, the Nesmiths sought a third residential stay for Phoenix. After years of struggling with depression, anxiety, and thoughts of suicide, the looming milestone of a 17th birthday, college and a future prompted the Nesmiths to seek another round of longer-term intensive care.

“I was trying to figure out a future I never thought I’d have,” Phoenix said. “And that was just another source of stress.”

But the Nesmiths say Phoenix’s insurance company denied residential treatment. Instead, it pointed Phoenix to group therapy. But the family had already tried that and was no longer eligible.

Two of the state’s Medicaid providers, Sunflower Health Plan and United HealthCare, declined to comment on how they authorize residential stays, deferring comment to the state.

Even as it got harder to access, the need for residential treatment didn’t go away.

In fact, with shorter lengths of stay, kids might get stable but didn’t have the time to develop good coping mechanisms and trauma management to stave off future crises. They’d often end up referred back to a treatment facility when suicidal, aggressive or self-harming tendencies returned. But now, there weren’t enough beds available.

In 2019, that means 150 kids in urgent need of treatment languish on a waitlist. That means foster kids who land at facilities with less intensive care, youth residential centers, show up with behavior more extreme than those residential centers are equipped to handle.

Headline-grabbing problems, but little change

The overflow of kids needing beds in residential treatment facilities has served as an underlying cause of what’s driven headlines over the past year.

Many of the children sleeping in foster care contractors’ offices were either waiting for a psychiatric bed or had just left one.

Kids who are suicidal — an epidemic so troubling that the state has convened a task force to deal with it — land in a mental health system stretched beyond capacity. And substance abuse by parents or kids can push children into needing intensive inpatient care. 

Recommendations this year from a child welfare tax force to fix the overload of the residential treatment system echoed similar results from previous years.

Whether their focus is mental health, children’s care or foster care, panels have found time and again that psychiatric residential treatment facilities don’t have enough space and aren’t given enough time to treat kids properly.

Kids are discharged, but problems persist

The people who run residential treatment facilities say that shortening kids’ length of stay pushes the facilities more into a stabilization role, which they say is supposed to fall to hospitals and crisis centers. Residential facilities often don’t see kids until they’ve had multiple hospital stays, when it becomes clear crisis behavior is becoming a chronic pattern.

“We are a part of changing that child’s trajectory in their life,” said Cheryl Rathbun, who oversees a residential treatment facility run by St. Francis Community Services. “It needs to be more about treatment, and not just about simple stabilization.”

But providers say they’re sometimes pushed to release kids who haven’t yet made progress on the deeper issues driving harmful behavior.  That happens, providers say, because insurance companies haven’t seen enough improvement to justify paying for additional treatment.

Dana Schoffelman, who runs a residential facility in Topeka, said she sometimes hears from the insurance providers that kids are at their “baseline” and need to be moved out of her facility because residential care isn’t able to move them past what’s become the kids’ new normal.

“The youth is actually here because that’s their baseline,’’ she said. “You can’t use the definition of what got you into services as the reason to stop services.”

The Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services doesn’t track how frequently kids cycle back through residential care, but providers and mental health advocates say it’s gotten more common since the lengths of stay got shorter.

A struggling mental health ecosystem

The direct hits to residential treatment facilities — shorter and fewer stays — came amid other changes to mental health services and treatment that weakened the continuum of mental health care.

Cuts to Medicaid reimbursements in 2016, though they were restored the next year, made it even harder for residential facilities to stay open. 

And some have pointed to juvenile justice reforms passed in 2016 that divert kids out of the justice system as a driver of more high-needs kids into foster care, and particularly into residential treatment.

Some residential facilities were already taking kids in the juvenile justice system. But Schoffelman, who runs Florence Crittenton in Topeka, said the shortage of beds has made it harder for kids who are particularly aggressive or high-needs to get treatment.

With beds mostly full, the people caring for them are stretched to the limit. That makes it hard for those residential centers to take on kids who need even more supervision while making progress with less severe cases.

Providers also talk repeatedly about the continuum of care. They say residential treatment needs to be part of a system that includes therapeutic care in the community, options for short-term hospitalization, and other mental health services.

When Kansas took the decision-making about who needs residential care out of the hands of community mental health centers, officials at those facilities say, it made it harder for kids to stay on that continuum.

Now that community mental health centers aren’t calling the shots, the first time the centers hear a kid was in residential care might be when they’re expected to put therapy services in place immediately after the child’s discharge.

Then, it’s a scramble to get the right services in place to keep that child from needing to go right back in, said Jessie Kaye, president of Prairie View Inc. mental health center.

Providers’ wish list

The people who run community mental health centers and residential facilities want to see a return to the pre-2011 model: stays approved by the community centers, not insurance providers; and more days in care.

That means more money for residential providers. Cheryl Rathbun told lawmakers in 2017 that it can cost $500 to $700 per night for children to stay in St. Francis’ facility. But providers say that funds the kind of therapy, round-the-clock staffing, and time to work with the kids’ families that means long-term improvement for kids.

Tara Wallace, a social worker and therapist for foster kids who used to work in a residential treatment facility, said short stays put impossible pressure on therapists and social workers who are trying to get as much done as possible to help the kids in their care before their time is up.

And Kyle Kessler, who heads Kansas’ association of community mental health centers, said adding more beds isn’t the only solution. It needs to be balanced with more front-end services, as well, so kids who can be served closer to home, are.

“I don’t think it’s an ‘either-or,’ ” he said. “I think it’s an ‘and.’”

Some have been encouraged by Gov. Laura Kelly’s interest in residential treatment. Kelly was an outspoken critic of long waitlists and shorter stays while she was a state senator. As governor-elect, she sent members of her transition team to meet with the heads of residential facilities to talk solutions.

But Kaye said changes can also be disruptive.

“Established relationships now have been severed,” she said. “It’ll be another year lost because we’ll have to start over with so many things.”

Madeline Fox is a reporter for the Kansas News Service. Follow her on Twitter @maddycfox.

RILEY COUNTY — Authorities have confirmed the identity of those who died in Thursday’s fire in Riley County.

According to Riley County Police, the autopsy confirmed them as Rodger D. Harris Sr., 72; Rea E. Harris, 72; Roger D. Harris Jr., 50; and Rocky Newell, 55.

The autopsy revealed there was no foul play, and all had evidence of inhalation of toxic fire gasses as the probable cause of death.

Fire Chief Pat Collins reported that the origin of the fire remains on or around the end of a couch on the first floor. The Fire District report will show that the cause of the fire is unknown. Careless smoking is suspected but cannot be positively confirmed from the team that investigated the fire.

The Fire District officials thanked those paid and volunteer fire personnel who endured the elements on the morning of the fire as well as the dispatchers, police officers, EMS personnel and city workers who performed their tasks during the incident. The call came in at 3:43 a.m. Thursday for the fire at 208 Riley Avenue in Ogden.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri couple has agreed to prison time after pleading to reduced charges in the 2014 death of their 1-year-old son.

35-year-old Jeffery Nelsen and 42-year-old Roseanna Danley were in the middle of a felony child abuse case in which they faced up to life in prison when they agreed to the deal Thursday.

The couple pleaded to reduced child abuse counts and agreed to seven years in prison.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Court records show a Kansas man charged with rape had been out on bond for a previous child molestation case.

23-year-old Crosson Saisi of Shawnee was arrested Friday and charged in Johnson County District Court with rape and aggravated sexual battery. The crimes allegedly occurred last October in Shawnee. The victim is listed as 22 or 23 years old.

Court records in the case do not show a defense attorney.

Saisi was charged in July with three counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child, age 14 or 15, in Lenexa. He was free on bond in that case. He is also out on bond for a separate identity theft filed in October.

His bond for the latest charges has been set at $500,000.

SHAWNEE MISSION, Kan. (AP) — A Shawnee Mission School District principal has resigned after police say he hit a car and left the scene while driving under the influence.

34-year-old Cory Strathman submitted his resignation after the crash last week. The Shawnee Mission school board approved the resignation at a meeting Thursday.

Police arrested Strathman after they say he hit another vehicle the afternoon of Jan. 25. Police say he had been drinking and taking medication at the time of the crash and was also driving with a suspended license and had no proof of insurance.

Strathman had been had been principal of Rosehill Elementary since 2014 and had worked in the school district since 2008.

By JOHN HANNA

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas’ new prisons chief is suggesting to legislators that the state corrections system is in crisis, and his briefings are leading lawmakers in both parties to conclude that they haven’t previously had a full picture of inmate riots and other problems.

Interim Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz also said Wednesday that an increased use of “double-bunking,” or housing two inmates to a cell, was a factor in riots in 2017 and 2018. Department of Corrections officials had previously dismissed a potential link.

Werholtz, who served as corrections secretary from December 2002 through 2010, returned to the job earlier this month when Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly took office. Under Republican Govs. Sam Brownback and Jeff Colyer, the department acknowledged staffing problems but then-Secretary Joe Norwood said serious disturbances were unconnected and the inmate population generally was under control.

The new interim secretary took questions Wednesday from the House Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee, two days after a grim briefing of the problems facing the department. Werholtz criticized double-bunking and later said that practice and overly aggressive transfers of inmatesamong prisons helped fuel riots at several prisons in 2017 and 2018.

And while the department under Norwood avoided the term, Werholtz did not shrink from using “riots” to describe the disturbances. The department this week provided legislators with photos of damaged prison buildings from riots in El Dorado in June 2017 and July 2018 , Norton in September 2017 and Larned in November 2018 .

Rep. Leo Delperdang, a Wichita Republican, said he was “truly disgusted” by “what we did not hear” previously. House committee Chairman Russ Jennings, a Lakin Republican, said its members felt “shock” after Werholtz’s briefings.

“I think we’re all thankful that we now have a much clearer picture of what’s really going on,” Jennings said later. “The whole story wasn’t told.”

Kelly’s proposed budget for the budget year that begins in July includes an additional $3 million to help prisons fill vacant positions. But the department is still expecting to keep 9 percent of its 3,500 positions open. The department reported that the overtime it paid ballooned from $1.7 million during its 2013 budget year to $8.2 million five years later.

“It had become common practice to do what we called collapsing posts,” Werholtz said Wednesday, relaying what he and other officials heard from staff. “It’s my perception at this point that all of the facilities have been collapsing a lot of posts for a long time.”

Werholtz said transfers of inmates had created concentrations of young, male offenders in some locations to the point where “we may have created a volatile mix unintentionally.” The department had previously acknowledged that some inmates were upset with being moved.

The department will be looking at mixing more of the younger inmates with older ones, Werholtz said, but must consider how quickly it can make such transfers.

As for double-bunking, Werholtz said increasing the concentration of inmates in a prison can create management problems. The department previously had said the practice was not a problem and the most cost-effective way to house a growing inmate population.

Werholtz said the prison system now has less flexibility to reverse double-bunking because the inmate population has continued to grow. As of Tuesday, the department had 10,071 inmates in its custody — 100 more than the system’s housing capacity, even with double-bunking.

“It was refreshing to hear what was actually going on — but also actually terrifying,” said Rep. Annie Kuether, a Topeka Democrat.