By ESTHER HONIG

Nineteen-year-old Claudia Rivera shares a single-story tract home in Liberal, Kansas, with her boyfriend, 20-year-old Jesùs Varela.

Last month, Varela’s mother moved in so she could watch Rivera’s baby boy, Fabian, while Rivera works at the Dollar General store and Valera pulls down a shift at the local meatpacking plant.

Getting pregnant at 17, Rivera says, changed her life – and her plans to go to college.

“I had him three months after I graduated,” she says. “I was going to go to school, but when it was my due date, that’s when classes started, so I delayed it two years and now next year for sure I’m going.”

The same year Rivera became pregnant, her best friend also had a baby.

In Liberal, she says, teen moms aren’t that unusual. In fact, southwest Kansas cities like Liberal, Dodge City and Garden City have the highest teenage birth rates in the state.

These towns also happen to have large Latino populations. Close to 60 percent of Liberal’s 20,000 residents are Latino. Many, like Rivera’s parents, emigrated from Mexico to work in the meatpacking plant.

The high teen pregnancy rates in this rural part of the state caught the attention of Dr. Romina Barral, a physician specializing in adolescent medicine at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City.

“When I came here to Kansas, I noticed that the teen pregnancy rates were higher than the rest of the country,” Barral says. “In fact, it was three times higher in the Latino or Hispanic community compared to other ethnic groups.”

According to The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 6.4 percent of Latinas ages 15 to 19 will give birth. That may not sound like a lot, but it’s the fourth-highest rate in the country.

Barral, along with Juntos, a research center for advancing Latino health, has been surveying Latino youth in southwestern Kansas to understand why the numbers are so high. And what she found is that teens there know even less about safe sex and contraceptives than she expected.

“These are teens that are raised in a very conservative community,” Barral says. “So basically they’re engaging in sexual behaviors without knowing exactly how to prevent their consequences.”

Like all public schools in Kansas, Liberal High School, which Rivera attended, is required to teach about contraceptives and sexually transmitted diseases. But Rivera says she never learned how to get the pill — or that she had other options.

“I knew that there was birth control but I thought that there was only the pills,” Rivera says. “I didn’t know about anything else, like the Mirena. But I didn’t ask my mom ’cause I was scared. She’s like, ‘Why are you having sex?’”

Mirena is a popular hormone-releasing intrauterine that lasts as long as five years. Barral thinks contraceptives like this should be readily available to teens like Rivera. She says that would be a big step in modernizing the state’s outdated approach to teen reproductive health.

“These methods are now first-line and should be offered first to these teenagers so that they can have their contraceptive needs covered for three to five years. Even up to 10 years if they choose a certain type of IUD,” Barral says. “So they can go ahead and enjoy their friendships, study and achieve their academic goals.”

Vincent Guilamo-Ramos is a professor at New York University who has studied adolescent health among Latinos for more than two decades. He says that while the national rate of teen pregnancy has decreased significantly in the past 20 years, it’s still unacceptably high for Latinos: About three out of 10 Latina teens will get pregnant before the age of 20.

That doesn’t mean Latino teens are more likely to engage in sex compared with other ethnic groups. Rather, Guilamo-Ramos says, the difference has to do with the resources available to them.

“If you’re Latino, you’re less likely to have a routine source of primary health care,” Guilamo-Ramos says. “You’re more likely to be under-insured or not insured, or you may be less likely to have access to reproductive health services.”

There are any number of reasons why that may be so. Many Latinos don’t have jobs that offer health benefits. Limited English proficiency can be a barrier. So can immigration status.

Crucially, Guilamo-Ramos says, teen pregnancy can perpetuate the cycle of poverty. Teen moms are more likely to drop out of school and face greater economic hardship than older mothers.

Rivera recognizes this. But she’s not sure she would have done anything differently.

“It’s kind of like a yes and a no,” she says. “If I was going to tell myself, ‘Don’t have sex without a condom,’ it’s kinda like, ‘Well, I don’t want my baby right now.’”

Now, Rivera says, she’d tell herself to wait – at least until she completed her education. At the moment, Rivera is focusing on work and saving money so that she can afford community college next fall.

Esther Honig is a freelance reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, which is based at KCUR.

Esther Honig is a freelance reporter  for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.

CAWKER CITY -A Kansas man was injured in an accident just before 7p.m. on Saturday in Mitchell County

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2004 Chevy Impala driven by Jacob A. Campbell, 25, Manhattan, was eastbound on U.S. 24 one mile west of Cawker City.

The vehicle swerved across both lanes of traffic and struck the guardrail on the south side of the roadway, went airborne and rolled.

Campbell was transported to Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney, Nebraska.

He was properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.

TAMI ABDOLLAH, Associated Press

LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) — For years, police nationwide have used patrol car-mounted scanners to automatically photograph and log the whereabouts of peoples’ cars, uploading the images into databases they’ve used to identify suspects in crimes from theft to murder.

Nowadays, they are also increasingly buying access to expansive databases run by private companies whose repo men and tow-truck drivers photograph license plates of vehicles every day.

Civil libertarians and lawmakers are raising concerns about the latest practice, arguing that there are few, if any, protections against abuse and that the private databases go back years at a time when agencies are limiting how long such information is stored.

Some argue police should get a warrant from a judge to access the databases, much as they would if they wanted to obtain emails.

“The public is understandably concerned about how this information is going to be used,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, but for police, the databases, just like surveillance cameras, are an important investigative tool.

License plate scans have been at the forefront of a privacy debate in recent years.

The license plate reader companies say their scans are useless without access to motor vehicle department rolls — which police have. They say lawmakers should focus on strengthening data access laws, rather than eliminating police tools.

The largest firm, Livermore, California-based Vigilant Solutions, has filed a lawsuit or actively lobbied in at least 22 states and the District of Columbia for its technology, said Todd Hodnett, founder of Digital Recognition Network, which provides the data it collects to law enforcement through its sister company Vigilant.

He said as of June that roughly 30,000 law enforcement officers nationwide subscribe to their LEARN database.

Hodnett said when he tells legislators that the data his company gathers is protected, “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard legislators say this sounds like a solution in search of a problem.”

The plate readers can collect 1,600 plates an hour. Vigilant has collected scans since 2007 and has more than 3 billion license plates, growing at a rate of 100 million a month from every major metro area. There are roughly 254 million registered vehicles in the U.S.

Law enforcement agencies have acknowledged privacy concerns over how long they store scans — which includes a photo of the vehicle, its plate, and a GPS and time marker — and have voluntarily instituted policies to limit that storage.

The Long Beach, California, police have used the license plate technology since 2005 and in December signed on with Vigilant. The department retains its own scans for two years, primarily because of server space and funding, like many other agencies.

“If somebody has more (scans), why would we not look at it?” Lt. Chris Morgan said.

Departments with retention policies, however, are able to still use private databases, which keep their scans forever, calling up information they wouldn’t have access to otherwise. It is up to departments to activate any limits in the private database to prevent employee access.

“There needs to be a balance,” said Morgan, who calls the technology the department’s No. 1, go-to investigative tool. “It obviously adds value. We know there’s value there. We know that it’s something we don’t want to go away. Does it need to be regulated? Maybe.”

When state governments have tried to ban private license plate scan collection and use, for example in Utah, they’ve faced a lawsuit arguing that the law violated the First Amendment by preventing private companies from taking photos of publicly visible license plates.

They ultimately amended their law to only bar law enforcement from using the privately collected scans.

Civil libertarians say they are concerned that police can use the database to establish a detailed pattern about a person’s behaviors, habits and lifestyle, such as what mosque they frequent, strip club or gun store they shop at.

Requiring a warrant to access such databases “provides a little bit of oversight,” said Kade Crockford, director of the technology for liberty program at the ACLU of Massachusetts.

The roots of the license plate scanning business lie in the repossession world. DRN provides license-plate snapping cameras to tow trucks and repossession workers. Banks and insurance companies have used it to track down tens of thousands of vehicles that are no longer being paid for.

Vigilant this year stopped offering a limited free search to thousands of law enforcement agencies in hopes that they’ll sign on for a paid version. Vigilant won’t disclose client numbers or the value of its law enforcement contracts. A review by The Associated Press, however, of nearly a dozen publicly available contracts indicates a value well into the millions.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the nation’s largest sheriff’s department, is participating. For smaller departments, which can’t afford to build up their own databases, the sheer amount of data found in the Vigilant system can be a game changer.

The Fairfield, Connecticut, police department had few clues last year after a man wearing a hoodie grabbed a pregnant woman’s purse at a gas station and jumped into a car that dragged her along the road.

Though the department has its own data collected from a few cameras, nothing came up.

Police were able to use the Vigilant database to identify a car spotted less than a quarter mile from the crime scene. Officers were sent over, and an hour later pulled over a man wearing a hoodie and a woman, both of whom confessed to the crime.

“We’ve had tremendous success with it,” said Deputy Chief Chris Lyddy. “Usually I first go to the private data if I’m looking for somebody.”

MANHATTAN— Before hundreds of purple-clad supporters, Kansas State University President Kirk Schulz on Friday night announced the most ambitious fundraising campaign in university history.

“The journey toward our 2025 vision takes another huge step forward tonightwith the public launch of the Innovation and Inspiration Campaign” Schulz said. “The tremendous generosity of alumni and friends who believe in Kansas State University’s future is truly the foundation for our success and the inspiration for this historic campaign.”

Innovation and Inspiration will raise $1 billion to drive Kansas State University toward its strategic vision to become a Top 50 public research university by 2025. The campaign will grow the university’s endowment, providing resources to improve student retention and graduation rates, invest in faculty development and launch new research endeavors — all key initiatives of the K-State 2025 strategic plan. In the five years leading up to the Oct. 9 public announcement, alumni, friends and corporations invested more than $766 million in the university through the Innovation and Inspiration Campaign.

“K-State is a family, and nothing demonstrates that more than the way our supporters have rallied around this campaign,” said Greg Willems president and CEO of the Kansas State University Foundation. “This is a momentous occasion for K-Staters to unite and create a bright future for the university we love.”

The Innovation and Inspiration Campaign will drive investment in scholarships, faculty, facilities and programs. It is co-chaired by Rand and Patti Berney,McKinney, Texas, and Richard and Mary Jo Myers, Arlington, Virginia.

“It is an honor to provide leadership for K-State during this critical moment in the university’s history,” said Rand Berney, a 1977 K-State graduate. “Through generous gifts from the K-State family, the Innovation and Inspiration Campaign is making significant progress toward the goals of K-State 2025 and driving the university forward to a prosperous, sustainable future.”

Retired Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, a 1965 Kansas State University graduate and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted the campaign supports the university’s land-grant mission.

“Because of its land-grant heritage, K-State has a long history of extraordinary student experiences, innovative research and academics, plus a solid record of significant achievements,” Myers said. “The Innovation and Inspiration Campaign will provide the means to expand outreach and make a college education more accessible, which are hallmarks of a university like K-State.”

The KSU Foundation is leading Innovation and Inspiration: The Campaign for Kansas State University to raise $1 billion for student success, faculty development, facility enhancement and programmatic excellence.

WICHITA – A Kansas man was injured in an accident just before 7p.m. on Saturday in Sedgwick County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2003 Yamaha motorcycle driven by Cory M. Ballard, 19, Whitewater, was northbound Greenwich Road at 101st Street North

The motorcycle struck a 2005 Chevy Impala that was eastbound 101st Street North.

Ballard was transported to Wesley Medical Center.

The driver of the Impala was not injured.

Ballard was wearing a helmet, according to the KHP.

ELLSWORTH, Kan. (AP) — A central Kansas judge is done volunteering at high school football games after suffering a concussion last month.

The Salina Journal reports that 73-year-old Ron Svaty got caught up in a play while working the chains during a Sept. 11 game between Beloit and Ellsworth. The Ellsworth County District Court judge says his head hit a concrete barrier on the track when he fell backward. He was unconscious for several minutes.

Svaty took some time off work to recover. He says he’s been trying to transition slowly from patient back to judge.

Svaty says in the years that he was a high school football player, he never suffered a concussion. That meant his recent injury was his first experience with the dizziness, nausea and memory loss they can cause.

.TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Authorities say a Topeka man has been fatally shot after an argument.

Topeka police said in a news release that the victim was 43-year-old Keith Leon Reed. Officers responded around 12:30 p.m. Saturday and found him wounded. The release said he was taken to a hospital, where he died about an hour later.

Police said the shooting followed an argument. No other information was immediately available.

ELLSWORTH- Four people were injured in an accident just after 2p.m. on Saturday in Ellsworth County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2007 Toyota Camry driven by Alan C. Rice, 16, Ellsworth, was westbound on Kansas 140 just west of the Kansas 156 Junction.

The driver failed to yield and made an unsafe left turn in front of a 1995 Honda Prelude driven by Dania O. Gonzalez, 16, Wichita, that was eastbound on Kansas 140

Rice, Gonzalez, and passengers in the Honda Candelaria Navarrete-Barron, 44, and a 6-year-old both of Wichita were transported to Ellsworth County Medical Center.

All were properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.

 

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Topeka police say a fleeing motorcyclist has died after colliding with a pole.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that the crash happened late Friday night. Police Lt. Joe Perry said in a news release that the motorcyclist who was killed was 42-year-old Joseph A. Thomas.

Police attempted to stop Thomas at 10:26 p.m. for a turn violation. He sped away, initiating a pursuit. But after just a minute, officers terminated the chase as Thomas passed Interstate 70 northbound, driving over 80 mph.

Perry says that soon afterward, officers discovered the motorcycle had collided with a light pole. Thomas was transported to a hospital, where emergency room doctors declared him dead at 10:59 p.m.