Police in Creston say seven people were arrested over the past week, four of them on drug-related charges. Arrested last Friday (March 4th), was 40-year old Amy Crispin, of Creston, who was taken into custody on a Union County warrant for Failure to Appear, on an original charge of Possession of a Controlled Substance/2nd offense. Crispin was being held in the Ringgold County Jail on $7,500 bond. Two people were arrested on drug charges early Saturday morning: 20-year old Phillip Pfeiffer, of Red Oak, and 20-year old Marcus Adair, of Milwaukee, WI., were arrested in Creston, for Possession of a Controlled Substance. Both men were later released from the Union County Jail on $1,000 bond, each. And, James Street, of Creston, was arrested early Sunday morning in Creston, for Possession with Intent to deliver/Marijuana, and Failure to Affix a drug tax stamp. He was later released on a $5,000 bond.

Police in Creston report also, 20-year old Jacob Davis, of Creston, was arrested Friday night on two Union County warrants for Unauthorized use of a credit card (charges under $1,000), and OWI/1st offense. His bond was set at $2,000. Earlier in the day, Friday, Creston Police arrested 21-year old Allen Hall, of Creston, for Driving While Barred, and 21-year old Nicholas Weckman, of Creston, was arrested on a Union County warrant for Violation of Probation. Weckman was being held in the Union County Jail on $5,000 bond, while Hall was released from custody on $3,000 bond.

In other news, Creston Police say a woman in the 1700 block of 160th Street reported March 1st, that sometime between Feb. 26th and Feb 23rd, someone entered a residence owned by her in the 500 block of W. Adams Street, and took a Red Velvet Settee, and a solid oak table with glass. The loss was estimated at $175.

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)

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