Iowa crime victims can now access a new tool to monitor the status of offenders. A free application called VINEMobile allows any user of a smart phone or tablet to anonymously monitor the location and custody status of offenders.

Janelle Melohn, director of the Crime Victim Assistance Division within the Iowa Attorney General’s office, says the app is loaded with information. “You can (search) any county jail or the Iowa Department of Corrections and get an immediate roster of all the inmates that are currently incarcerated,” Melohn says.

The app is an extension of the IowaVINE system, which allows people to sign up for text messages when a specific offender is transferred or released. VINE stands for Victim Information and Notification Everyday.

The VINEmobile app is available for both Android and Apple devices. “We only hope to enhance it going forward by providing other resources such as phone numbers and websites for victims to get even more information,” Melohn says. For both Android and Apple devices, users can find the app using the search term “VINEMobile.”

photo of suspects

Two men are in custody following a bank robbery this morning in Pella. Police were sent to the Midwest One Bank in Pella shortly after 10 a.m. Witnesses stated two armed men who were wearing hoodies and ski masks confronted a teller and left with cash.

Photos from surveillence video of the suspects were released and tips from the public led officers to a hotel not far from the bank. That’s where the two suspects, both from Des Moines, were arrested. No one was injured.

Debates about gun control continue after the elementary school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, but an Iowa psychiatrist says the debate also needs to include mental health. Dr. Walter Duffy is the founder and CEO of Premier Psychiatric in Shenandoah.

Dr. Duffy says we first need to overcome the stigma about those needing mental health care. There’s another challenge, too. “Access is a difficult issue in various places because there’s not enough mental health providers to go around,” Duffy says. “Especially in the Midwest, psychiatry is very depleted, especially if you talk about child and adolescent psychiatry services.”

Duffy says even where service is available, there can be another obstacle — the willingness of a person to get the help they need. “If you do not have people onboard with wanting to obtain services, it’s very difficult in this country to make somebody take services,” Duffy says. “If you look at, like emergency protective custody where the courts take over and say you have to receive services. That’s only for people nowadays who are acutely suicidal or acutely homicidal.”

Duffy says one of the goals of his practice is to provide service to rural areas where services may not be readily available. “We also do tele-health where we go out to rural communities,” Duffy says. “I don’t like it that people have to drive two hours to see us here. I grew up in a farming community. People need the services where they are and there’s a lot of things like tele-health and other technologies going forward where we can make some big in-roads in that area.”

Premier Psychiatric offers tele-health services in Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota. He says they hope to expand in 2013 to reach additional rural areas.

by Chuck Morris, KMA, Shenandoah