Tag: Kansas

Kansas middle schooler death prompts urgency from COVID-19 school safety panel

by Noah Taborda, Kansas Reflector

Topeka – The recent death of a Kansas middle school student from COVID-19 raised the urgency Wednesday of a panel focused on pandemic school safety to implement precautionary measures across the state.

In addition to the death, outbreaks at schools across Kansas more than doubled over the last week, and cases have continued to outpace the previous school year. Kansas also remains well behind the national average for vaccinations among 12- to 17-year-olds.

Education officials and health professionals in the Safe Classrooms Workgroup are working to encourage local districts to implement mask policies and testing strategies as soon as possible. Vernon Mills, a retired pediatrician on the panel, said some districts may need a more aggressive approach to prevent further illness and death.

“I’m not above putting it right in your face because I think that’s the only way sometimes it gets across to people that this is not a game,” Mills said. “This is not a political contest where we are going to go back at the end of the day and just lick our wounds. We’re talking about somebody who is going to die because of the decision you made.”

Since Monday, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment has reported 2,562 new cases and three new deaths. There are currently 72 active school outbreaks in Kansas, an increase of 41 since Sept. 13, and 537 cases.

The increase has led to more school districts implementing mask policies and testing strategies, but many are either still holding out or have not responded to Kansas Department of Health and Environment Surveys.

In an update to the latest data on precautionary measures being taken at schools across the state, Marci Nielsen, chief adviser to the governor for COVID-19 coordination, said seven new school districts have submitted a testing budget plan to KDHE.

Through the KDHE’s K-12 Stay Positive Test Negative Initiative, school districts can create a flexible testing strategy from three models with funding and organizational assistance from the state agency. The seven new school districts represent about 2,000 Kansas students.

Of state school districts, 11% have expressed no interest in the funding available.

Kansas education Commissioner Randy Watson said these testing strategies have been well received in the districts that have implemented them.

“It’s a great method to stay in school,” Watson said. “One superintendent noted how many instructional days he has saved by simply doing the testing protocol.”

Watson said there is optimism that COVID-19 vaccines will be available for children ages 5 to 11 by the end of the semester. Kansas youth vaccination rate for 12- to 17-year-olds is currently 48.8%, compared with 56.5% nationwide.

Three school districts have implemented a mask requirement for at least some students since last week and one school, which had previously not reported to KDHE, has no mask mandate. However, more than 50% of school districts have yet to respond to the KDHE survey.

Jennifer Bacani McKenney, a family physician and Wilson County Health Officer, said the workgroup should consider what other states are doing to ensure they have the necessary data.

“We know that things change week by week and day by day really,” Bacani McKenney said. “How do we make it a very simple process for the schools to communicate with us so that we can have even better data, so we don’t have this big void of information?”

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com, may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2021/09/22/kansas-middle-schooler-death-prompts-urgency-from-covid-19-school-safety-panel/.

Wichita man arrested in connection with Jan. 6 Capitol breach

A Kansas man was arrested Monday for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, which disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress that was in the process of ascertaining and counting the electoral votes related to the presidential election.

Michael Eckerman, 37, of Wichita, is charged with federal offenses that include assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers; obstruction of an official proceeding; and disorderly conduct in the Capitol building. Eckerman made his initial court appearance Monday in U.S. Magistrate Court for the District of Kansas.

According to court documents, Eckerman pushed his way to the front of a crowd outside the crypt of the U.S. Capitol building and yelled at officers.

He pushed one officer back several feet, making him fall down a small set of stairs and allowing rioters to move farther inside the Capitol. He then made it to Statuary Hall on the second floor and pushed his way through another set of officers, whom he yelled at for several minutes before making his way through a line of Capitol Police officers, according to court documents.

Eckerman then went through the House of Representatives side of the Capitol and entered the Rayburn reception room before exiting the Capitol through the upper house doors.

The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the Department of Justice National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section. Assistance was provided by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas.

The case is being investigated by the FBI’s Kansas City and Washington Field Offices, as well as the Metropolitan Police Department, with assistance provided by the U.S. Capitol Police.

In the eight months since Jan. 6, more than 600 individuals have been arrested in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, including at least 185 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement. The investigation remains ongoing.

Anyone with tips can call 1-800-CALL-FBI (800-225-5324) or visit tips.fbi.gov.

Kansas cold case task force lays groundwork for sharing DNA database hits

by Noah Taborda, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — Members of a task force developing protocol for newly discovered DNA evidence in closed cases is backing a recommendation laying out a process to ensure defense counsel is made aware when a match is found in DNA registries.

Following an August meeting of the Alvin Sykes Cold Case Task Force to discuss possible avenues to address this, a contingent of prosecuting and defense attorneys provided a recommendation for sharing information on hits in CODIS, or the Combined DNA Index System. The suggestion would reinforce the ethical duty of the prosecuting agency to turn this information over to the defense once an investigation, if needed, is completed.

Any investigation must be completed within a reasonable amount of time. The information can be provided to the defense counsel of record immediately if there is no need for an investigation.

Public defenders have expressed concern that an inconsistent approach to DNA sharing among investigating law enforcement agencies or prosecutors could deny defendants the evidence necessary to prove their innocence. Without legal safeguards, they argued, there is considerable risk that exculpatory information is not shared.

“We wanted to at least allow some time for the agency to investigate on their own,” said Alice Craig, a task force member with the University of Kansas Project for Innocence and Post-Conviction Remedies. “That said, we also believe that once that investigation is complete, that information needs to be turned over to counsel regardless of what was determined in the investigation so that counsel of record could look at it and evaluate it.”

The task force recommendations will be included in a report to the Legislature. The task force also is recommending an ongoing educational program to boost knowledge of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation’s Laboratory Information Management System, through which information on DNA matches is available.

While task force members were able to come to a consensus to approve a rough draft of the recommendation, to be refined in the final report, some expressed a desire to see more concrete assurances.

Reid Nelson, a capital appeals defender at the Kansas Board of Indigent Defense Services, was concerned with loose language in the recommendation that could imply the information can be turned over on a discretionary basis. He suggested the task force take the route of drafting or recommending legislation placing this requirement into state statute.

“If we want this to be uniformly implemented in a permanent way, it seems like a statute is by far the best way to make that happen,” Nelson said. “The statutes, for those of us that practice, are the how-to manuals. We all open the statute to see how we should proceed.”

Rep. John Carmichael, a Wichita Democrat and attorney, questioned how long a reasonable amount of time would be before the information is conveyed to the defense counsel. He acknowledged the need for time to investigate the new DNA match but said without some sort of time requirement, cases could fall through the cracks.

“How long a time is necessary or is allowed because I know in a busy lawyer’s office sometimes things come in and you have to prioritize and so six months later, a year later, you might get to a report like this,” Carmichael said. “I don’t want somebody sitting in jail for years because a prosecutor somewhere has not gotten around to notifying defense counsel.”

Carmichael agreed to support the recommendation if a minority report was included emphasizing he, Nelson and others preferred and recommended a legislative path.

Justin Edwards, a deputy district attorney in Sedgwick County representing the Kansas County and District Attorney Association, maintained the ethical obligation to disclose any new information should dispel any concerns.

“I think it’s a good thing that we remind our prosecutors of this obligation, but to create a new statutory obligation under discovery, I think you’re going to lose the support of prosecutors for this language,” Edwards said.

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com, may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2021/09/15/kansas-cold-case-task-force-lays-groundwork-for-sharing-dna-database-hits/.