The senior guard averaged 20 points and nearly four steals in four victories. McManaman scored 24 points, including 4-of-6 from three point range, and registered five steals in a victory over Remsen St. Marys. She finished the week with 13 three pointers and connected on just over 56 percent from behind the arc.
Class 1A: Amber Paden, North Iowa
February 11, 2009 By
The sophomore center averaged 19 points and 11 rebounds in three victories and connected on nearly 67-percent from the field. Paden scored 23 points, on 11-of-14 shooting, grabbed 16 rebounds and had four steals in a victory over Mason City Newman.
Waterloo police investigate fatal shooting
February 11, 2009 By
A homicide investigation is underway in Waterloo following a late night shooting just blocks from the police station. Several blocks of a residential neighborhood remain cordoned off today while police try to piece together details of the deadly shooting.
Officers were called to the neighborhood near downtown Waterloo just after 11 p.m. Tuesday on multiple reports of shots being fired. When they arrived, officers found 29-year-old Taveros Galloway of Waterloo dead inside a vehicle on a sidewalk outside a home.
Authorities say Galloway was fatally shot and pronounced him dead at the scene. An autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow. Police removed the S-U-V from the scene earlier today. Authorities say they’re in the early stages of the investigation. They’ve released little information about the shooting.
Lawmakers consider changes for sex offender law
February 11, 2009 By
Iowa lawmakers are considering extensive changes to the state’s sex offender laws to get the state into compliance with federal rules. As part of the re-write, some lawmakers want to scrap the restriction on where sex offenders live and instead, limit where they can go during the day.
Iowa has until July of 2010 to comply, or face losing $450,000 a year in drug and crime fighting grants. Ross Loder, the Department of Public Safety’s legislative liason, says there are other compelling reasons why Iowa should conform with the National Sex Offender Registry.
Loder says, "We potentially could face a situation where Iowa’s much more attractive to sex offenders who want to remain outside of a integrated national system. In fact, we know today, sex offenders do in fact jurisdiction shop." Iowa’s registry only includes the offender’s address and physical description.
If the state joins the national registry, offenders will also be required to report their place of employment, the kind of car they drive, and, if they’re a student, where they go to school. It does not include a residency requirement. In 2002, Iowa lawmakers voted to bar convicted sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or daycare.
Bremer County Sheriff Dewey Hildebrandt was once a staunch supporter of the restriction but now fears it’s forcing offenders into hiding.
Sheriff Hildebrandt says, "The current law, even in our particular county, has pushed people unable to find residency within communities out in our county parks where it’s a campground and, for Pete sake, children go to those campgrounds with their parents and pushing sex offenders into campgrounds to me is not an ideal solution."
Hildebrandt supports replacing the residency requirement with an anti-loitering provision. Legislation at the statehouse would prohibit an offender from hanging out within 300-feet of a school, daycare, park or swimming pool. Registered sex offenders could only attend school functions if given permission by school officials.
Representative Clel Baudler, a Republican from Greenfield, has been advocating for this change for three years, but says lawmakers have previously lacked the political courage to scrap the 2,000 foot rule.
Baudler says: "Absolutely, their fear of the postcards during the campaign, you know the radio ads, ‘You’re soft on sex offenders,’ ‘You attack our kids.’ This bill, if we can get it done, will be smarter and tougher on the perpetrators that are on the sex offender registry." While Baudler has the support of the state sheriffs and county attorneys associations, not everyone is ready to abandon Iowa’s 2000-foot rule.
Boone Community Schools superintendent Theron Schutte likes the idea of an anti-loitering law, but says it should be in addition to the residency requirement. "Anything that would put the school district or its occupants, whether it be students or staff, in a greater position of potential danger would be a bad move. From that standpoint, I think just opening the door to people on sex offender registry living wherever they want to around a school, I think that would be a bad move," Schutte says.
That view is why Senator Keith Krieman, a Democrat from Bloomfield, is searching for some middle ground. Krieman says it may be time to tweak the 2000-foot law so that it doesn’t apply in every case. He cites young offenders still living with parents or those who public safety has deemed a low risk to re-offend. Kreiman says even small changes will be politically charged — and more easily adopted in a non-election year.
Kreiman says, "I think the entire bill will need bi-partisan support and I think it’s more likely to happen this year than next because of those political concerns, and the fact that we are told by the federal government that we need to comply with the Adam Walsh bill."
While Iowa doesn’t have to change its 2,000-foot rule to comply with federal law, everyone involved says any rewrite of the state sex offender registry should include a debate of the residency requirement. It’s a discussion that law enforcement has been having for years but one that legislative leaders have tried to avoid.
Northeast Iowa man’s hunger for chicken leads to arrest
February 11, 2009 By
A northeast Iowa man’s hunger for chicken apparently led to his arrest after a robbery in Illinois. A man walked into a convenience store in Galena, Illinois Monday, put a six pack of beer on the counter and asked for cigarettes. The man then pulled out a knife and demanded money. The suspect, later identified as 47-year-old James Ball of Oelwein, was spotted by a police officer at a nearby WalMart shortly after the robbery. Ball had apparently stopped at the store to buy some chicken. Ball and his vehicle matched the description given police from the robbery and the officer stopped him and arrested him without incident. Ball faces a charge of armed robbery.
Homeland Security chief headed to eastern Iowa
February 11, 2009 By
The new chief of federal disaster relief efforts is scheduled to tour flood-damaged areas of eastern Iowa this afternoon. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will begin her tour in Cedar Rapids, according to Governor Chet Culver. "Starting with a visit of Mercy Hospital at 2:30 p.m. and a tour of the downtown area," Culver says.
Napolitano will speak with the media after that tour, then the group will drive south. "At five o’clock, we will meet with University of Iowa officials and tour the flood-impacted areas of the campus in Iowa City," Culver says.
Culver asked Napolitano to bring along administrators from other federal agencies involved in flood recovery, like Housing and Urban Development and Health and Human Services, so they can see for themselves the damage that remains from last spring’s flooding. "I’m honored that just three weeks after taking office Secretary Napolitano will be on the ground here in Iowa to see both the work that has been completed and, most importantly, the work that remains," Culver says. "And I look forward to working with her and the entire Obama Administration in meeting the millions and millions of dollars we need in terms of the unmet needs that our state is faced with."
Napolitano’s first stop will be the Cedar Rapids hospital where patients were evacuated on June 13 as flood waters swamped the facility.
Immigration-related bill shelved
February 11, 2009 By
Democrats who control the legislature’s debate agenda are shelving a bill that would have given local law enforcement more authority to detain illegal immigrants. Ross Loder, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Public Safety, says some law enforcement officials fear the added responsibility would hinder their investigations.
"If we go into a community and we’re investigating a sexual assault or murder, we might have to go in and win trust (and) maintain trust from people who may or may not be legally present in the country," Loder says. According to Loder, there’s a long waiting list for the training that’s necessary to get local law enforcement qualified to deal with illegal immigrants, and there’s no extra money in the budget either to pay for the training or the extra costs associated with processing illegal immigrants.
Representative Doug Struyk, a Republican from Council Bluffs, says he signed up to support the bill after officials in his area were forced to release 14 illegal immigrants because federal authorities were too busy to book them. The bill would have given state officials the right to seize the assets of illegal immigrants as reimbursement for state services, too.
