A Red Oak man was arrested this (Monday) morning on a Red Oak P-D warrant for Theft in the 2nd Degree. Police say 18-year old Josiah Ivan Prokes was arrested at around 1:25-a.m. and held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $5,000 cash bond.

A bill that’s passed the Iowa Senate and is now eligible for House debate would make it easier to convict so-called “peeping toms.” Ruth Lapointe was a University of Iowa student in 2012 when a neighbor caught their landlord in the act. “She had stuffed one of the peep holes in her ceiling with cotton balls and noticed the cotton balls being removed and then was able to confront our landlord right after the incident and he admitted guilt,” Lapointe says.

Lapointe found a peep hole in her apartment, above the sink in her bathroom. Her landlord was convicted of 11 counts of invasion of privacy, but was not charged for spying on the apartments where men lived, just women like Lapointe. Lapointe says current law is flawed because it requires a peeping tom’s victim to be nude or partially nude and requires prosecutors to prove the peeper was sexually excited by what he or she saw.

“The crucial elements of this bill are that it removes requirements of arousal for a perpetrator of invasions of privacy or peeping tom,” Lapointe says. “That’s very hard to prove in court, that kind of intent, and not only is it hard to prove in court but, in my opinion, it is completely irrelevant to the crime.”

The bill has passed the Senate unanimously and last Thursday the House Public Safety Committee gave the bill its unanimous support. A similar bill was filed last year after a Des Moines cop was spotting looking through a locker room window as a female officer changed clothes inside, but he wasn’t prosecuted because the person who caught him couldn’t say what he was looking at.

Lapointe says invading someone’s privacy “without a legitimate purpose” should be sufficient for a conviction.”The bill, in my opinion, does a great job of just making it so if you assume privacy, you believe yourself to be in a private space, someone who is invading that is guilty,” Lapointe says. Last week, Coralville police arrested a Tiffin man who is accused of using his cell phone to take a picture of another man who was inside one of the stalls in a shopping mall restroom.

The bill that awaits House debate would make it illegal to install or retrieve equipment used to take pictures or record video in places someone reasonably expects to be a private place.

(Radio Iowa)

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press

The Cass County Democratic Party will hold its County Convention on Saturday, March 12th, at the Cass County Court House. Democratic Party Chair Sherry Toelle says registration will begin at 8:30-a.m., with the Convention convening at 9-a.m. The fifty Delegates to the County Convention will elect five delegates, based on Presidential preference groups, who will move on to the Iowa Democratic Party’s District Convention on April 30th in Creston and to the State Convention to be held in Des Moines on June 18th.

County delegates will also vote on the County Platform and on representatives for District and State Committees as well as to vacancies on the Cass County Central Committee.

An investigation Sunday evening into several vehicles being damaged in the 600 block of Damon Street, in Council Bluffs, resulted in the arrest of two people on one count each of Felony Criminal Mischief in the 2nd degree. Authorities say 36-year old James M. Yoshida and 41-year old Jacqueline Robinson, both of Council Bluffs, were taken into custody, after witnesses positively identified them as the perpetrators who allegedly caused $6,500 damage to nine vehicles by scratching and/or spray painting those vehicles.

Robinson

Yoshida

The investigation into their alleged activities began after police were called to the scene at around 7:15-p.m., Sunday. While en route to the call, they were advised the suspects had left the area in a blue Ford truck. Officers located the suspect vehicle at S. 1st and Knepper Streets, and identified the suspects as Yoshida and Robinson, who denied damaging the vehicles. Witness collaboration and evidence located inside the suspects’ vehicle, linked them to the crime.