Police in Creston, Thursday morning, arrested a man on a charge of Sexual Abuse in the 2nd Degree. 21-year-old Tenkeno Latraill Shaun Gipson, of Creston, was arrested at his residence. He was transported to the Union County Jail and held on a $25,000 cash or surety bond.

(Des Moines, Iowa) – Iowa District 18 House Representative Thomas Moore, a Republican from Griswold, has released his weekly report, “Moore on the Issues,” a summary of bills passed in the House. Moore said members of the House passed 33 bills, with 28 having had bi-partisan or unanimous support. Among the bills that passed through the House this week, was a State Government Realignment Bill.

Moore says “By aligning functions and services that are similar, taxpayers will have a more straightforward process for interacting with the government and receiving the proper services without unnecessarily going to several agencies. The bill now goes to the Governor for her signature.

Two other bills Moore highlighted include those pertaining to Consumer Data Privacy and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) policies. With regard to the CDP bill….

And, on the ESG, Moore says…

Among the other bills that passed through the Iowa House of Representatives this week, was:

·     HF340 creates a grant program to allow municipalities to provide a tax deferred award to volunteer firefighters, emergency medical care providers, and reserve peace officers.

·     HF358 increases penalties for eluding.

·     HF603 allows volunteer fire fighters, EMS providers, and reserve peace officers to purchase one set of tires per their personal vehicle each year through the state’s master contract for tires.

·     HF499 requires car insurance companies to cover the value of a car seat that is located in a vehicle subject to a loss.

·     HF570 increases penalties for assault if the victim is pregnant and the defendant knows or should have known.

Representative Tom Moore can be reached at tom.moore@legis.iowa.gov, or at 712-789-9954.

(Radio Iowa) – The State Patrol says there’s been an increase in distracted driving on the open roadways — and the D-O-T says it’s become an issue at train crossings as well. Kris Klop oversees the installation of warning devices at rail crossings for the D-O-T and says accidents started changing around the time of the COVID pandemic.  “For some reason, they’re now running into the side of trains, rather through the gates into the side of the trains, rather than trying to go around the gates and then getting hit by the trains,” he says. “I definitely have a suspicion that involves distracted driving.” Klop says racing to beat a train through a crossing is a conscious decision, but it’s hard to see how someone can just drive through gates into a train.

“Between the train through the middle of the roadway and the flashing lights and the gates, I don’t know how people can miss that and run into the train,” Klop says. Klop says there’s a yearly program to assess rail crossings and the need for warning devices or upgrades — but that doesn’t mean anything if the driver isn’t paying attention. “Nationwide, 47 percent of the accidents are at crossings that have lights and gates. So putting lights and gates at a railroad crossing does not completely eliminate the chance of there being an accident there,” he says. Klop says the number of accidents at crossings in Iowa has dropped from 300 a year in 1987 down to about 15 a year more recently.

“If everything is working properly and motorists are heeding the warning devices and not paying attention to their phone, they should be safe. If motorists are heading what’s there to warn them of the railroad crossing, they should heed that, and if everything is working properly, then they will be safe,” Klop says. Klop says Iowa has just under five-thousand railroad crossings with 22-hundred-64 that are passive and have no signals. There are 11-hundred-28 crossings with gates, 702 with just flashing lights, and 742 where the railroad track goes over or under a bridge. He says any crossing where a car has to drive over the track has some sort of advanced warning for drivers.

“At a bare minimum, it’s federally required that they have a crossbuck sign on either side with a yield sign attached to it. Or in some cases, if an engineering study determined it was necessary, they can put a stop sign there in lieu of the yield sign, “Klop says Of course, you can have a higher level of safety devices, you have flashing lights and gates or cantilevers over the roadway, with flashing lights on them. Klop says they have 15 to 18 rail signal projects during a typical year, and one to three cases each year where they close a crossing.