Representative Dawn Creekmore of Bauxite was named “Legislator of the Year” by the Arkansas Psychological Association  and recently was named one of the 10 Most Influential Arkansas Legislators by Talk Business Quarterly-2009

This week we recognize Veterans Day, a time for all Americans to celebrate the patriotism, service, and sacrifice of those who have proudly put their own lives on the line to keep us out of harm’s way.

Police Sgt. Kimberly Munley is a retired member of the Armed Forces and she is rightfully hailed as a hero for her role in stopping the gunman in Fort Hood.

Everyday in the media, we see women in military roles that were once thought unimaginable and unattainable. Our women veterans span generations and all branches of the military including the National Guard and Reserve components.

Currently there are almost 2 million women veterans in America.

It’s often forgotten that since the beginning of time, women have served in all wars and conflicts. The history of women in the military is a history of love for country, service, commitment, dedication, and courage, and it includes sacrifices that have largely gone unrecognized. That is changing, but we must be part of that change.

With a rapidly increasing number of women serving in the military today and returning from deployments as seasoned veterans, Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities and veterans service organizations such as the Disabled American Veterans are working overtime to ensure that the unique needs of women veterans are met. For decades the VA has been at the forefront for healthcare and lifestyle solutions affecting an aging male population, however now we must identify innovative courses of treatment and solutions to obstacles that are unique to women veterans such as pregnancy, breast cancer, and other medical concerns.

In the coming months I plan to stand heart to heart with the National Foundation for Women Legislators (NFWL) and the Center for Women Veterans at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to identify and implement new strategies to meet the everyday challenges that women veterans face. I hope you will join me in this effort. I encourage women veterans and their families to bring specific needs and concerns to our attention.
Thank you to all our Veterans and their families,

Rep. Dawn Creekmore
Veteran Affairs Team Leader for Arkansas, NFWL

                                                                                                                                                            Pictured with Rep. Dawn Creekmore are Mr. Keith Baker, principle of
                                                                                                                                                            Bauxite High school, and Dr. Roger Neal

Identity theft is a growing concern all across America. According to a document released by the Federal Trade Commission in February of 2009, over 313,000 complaints of identity theft were recorded by the Consumer Sentinel Network. These numbers were up from just under 260,000 complaints in 2007 and showed a huge increase since 2000 when only 31,140 were filed. Twenty-four percent of the 2008 complaints were due to suspects opening new credit accounts or loans fraudulently or committing other fraudulent credit card actions.

Dawn Creekmore, Arkansas State Representative for District 27, decided something should be done to allow consumers to protect themselves against such fraud. She decided a law should be on the books in Arkansas to make it possible for consumers to freeze credit history information until they were ready to access it for legitimate reasons.

Her first attempt to pass a bill for this purpose ended in a veto by the governor. She did not let that stop her, however. She reworked and resubmitted the bill. In February, 2009, the bill became Act 223 after passing through the state congress and receiving Governor Mike Beebe’s blessing.

Under the act, Arkansas consumers may contact the three credit bureaus, TransUnion, Equifax and Experian, pay $5 to each bureau and freeze credit histories until they contact them again to have them released. The service is free for seniors.

“If you qualify for AARP, it’s free,” said Creekmore.

Previously, the credit bureaus were charging $10 a piece for a similar service, and there was no guarantee the rate wouldn’t change. There were no rules for Arkansas until the bill was passed. Now, the fee is locked in at $5, and Arkansas is able to set the rules for how the system works for Arkansans.

Creekmore said it was important to her that senior citizens should be allowed to take advantage of this service for free. “Our elderly are huge targets,” she said.

Creekmore said children were having their identities stolen as well. Since Social Security numbers are issued almost as soon as a baby is born, and few people check the credit histories on their children, this kind of identity theft may go undetected for a long time. With a security freeze, parents can freeze their childrens’s credit histories until they are adults, making it much more difficult for someone to commit this type of fraud.

Anyone who wants to freeze his or her credit history should go to each of the credit bureau’s web-sites individually to do so. At www.TransUnion.com, scroll down to the bottom of the home page and look for and click on the words “security freeze” under the identity theft category. At www.Equifax.com, click on, “request a security freeze.” At www.Experian.com, click on, “security freeze,” located at the bottom of the home page under “Notices.” From there, follow the directions. According to Creekmore, at some point the directions will ask for a state. After choosing Arkansas, the rest of the requirements will follow the rules set up by the new legislation. Part of the process will include setting up a Personal Identification Number (PIN). The PIN will be the key for lifting the freeze. It will be the only way someone can access the credit history to apply for credit.

After a consumer has frozen his or her credit history, most of the time business will go on as usual. The freeze will not apply to legitimate every day uses of credit history such as reviews done by employers or the credit card companies with which a person holds accounts. Court orders, collection agencies, background checks and other similar activities will also be conducted without interruption.

“We’re not trying to slow down or interrupt business as usual,” assured Creekmore.

However, if someone is going to apply for any type of credit, whether it is for a car loan or credit card or to buy furniture, and if his or her credit history is frozen, the freeze will need to be lifted first. To lift a freeze temporarily, the consumer will call all three credit bureaus with a PIN.

According to Creekmore, the bureaus will only take about 15 minutes to lift the freeze, and there will be a two-hour window allowing the potential creditor to do the credit check needed for approval, then the freeze will go back into effect. There will be a $5 fee with each bureau each time a freeze is temporarily lifted. To keep from paying $15 each time, Creekmore said another option would be to find out which credit bureau the creditor would call and to only have the freeze lifted with that bureau.

All of the steps to set up a security freeze and lift it can also be conducted by phone, website or by mail. Each credit bureau has contact information listed on its website.

(UALR Public Radio) – If you only judged Representative Dawn Creekmore by the placid expression always on her face, you wouldn’t guess that she’s charging harder than any other state lawmaker on the crime front.
Creekmore
 
Here’s just a handful of the measures that Creekmore is running this year:
- A bill to strengthen the punishment for violating a restraining order twice
- A bill to eliminate the statute of limitations on rape when DNA evidence becomes available
- Another bill to let police collect a DNA sample from a person who is charged – not convicted – in certain violent crimes.
Creekmore says she got together with victims advocates, prosecutors, and law enforcement,
Creekmore
Creekmore says the problem of domestic violence, especially, is eating away at many Arkansas families.
Creekmore
But not everyone thinks the crackdown is such a good idea. Criminal Defense attorney Jeff Rosenzweig has spoken against almost all of Creekmore’s bills in committee.
Rosenzweig
Jeff Rosenzweig says Creekmore’s bills tend to go too far, even at times stepping on a defendant’s constitutional rights. He says these bills are part of a long trend to address crime simply by making punishment more severe. There’s danger, he says, when a simple anecdote can shape legislation.
Rosenzweig
Representative Steve Harrelson chairs the House Judiciary committee where many of Creekmore’s bills have been heard. He thinks Creekmore’s measures are part of a nationwide push to get tougher on sexual offenders, and domestic abuse.
Harrelson
Harrelson, who’s also a lawyer in Texarkana, says Creekmore’s aims are good, but lawmakers have to consider the costs. Each of Creekmore’s bills puts only a few more people in prison every year. But with prisons overflowing, every offense counts. There’s the cost of litigation too – Harrleson says lawmakers have to take the constitutional arguments seriously.
Harrelson
In Creekmore’s office, she displays a placard in Latin. It translates, she says, to “Don’t Let Negative People Get You Down.”
Creekmore
Creekmore says the constitutional concerns are overblown. And someone may work on rehabilitating criminals instead of imprisoning them, but it’s not her.
Creekmore
Almost half of Creekmore’s crime bills are now signed into law. Others are now in the Senate Judiciary committee. There, concerns similar Jeff Rosenzweig’s are actually tempering the language of the bills. For FM 89 News, I’m KM.
© Copyright 2009, UALR Public Radio

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The Benton Courier
By Jillian Duke-Staff Writer

Get arrested for a felony and Arkansas could get your DNA even without a conviction.

State Representative Dawn Creekmore is behind the push for this change in Arkansas law.

Representative Creekmore says this move is about her desire, to help police solve violent crimes. While others say the change would violate the constitution.

Mary Jean Buskin cherishes the 21 years she had with her daughter Juli.

You may recall, the young ballerina was poised to graduate from the University of Oklahoma, when she was kidnapped and killed.

“Everywhere we went where we saw something strange we would wonder is that him is that him,” says Buskin.

This not knowing went on for nine years. Finally there was a hit from Oklahoma’s DNA data base.

State Representative Dawn Creekmore has written a bill to change Arkansas’ inmate DNA collection law.

“This bill will require DNA samples to be taken upon a felony arrest,” says Creekmore.

Right now, Arkansas collects DNA only after a conviction. Creekmore says murders like Buskin’s could be solved sooner if the state would only stop waiting for a conviction before getting a DNA sample.

“Taking DNA sample is just like taking a finger print it’s not infringing on anyone’s rights,” says Creekmore.

Defense attorney Jeff Rosenzweig says this proposed law sets a dangerous precedence.

“DNA tells you so much more than a mere fingerprint,” says Creekmore.

He’s concerned innocent people’s rights to privacy could be violated.

“You have people with no particular reason to respect your privacy having access to it,” says Rosenzweig.

Supporters like the Buskins, say having a larger data base of DNA will do more good than bad.

For instance DNA could possibly free the wrongly accused, and give victims peace of mind.

“We wanted to know and the DNA made that possible,” says Buskin.

Creekmore says the next step is to file the bill in December.
Oklahoma is currently working on a similar law.

LITTLE ROCK – Convicted sex offenders will face tougher sentences and stricter monitoring under two bills passed by the Legislature in a special session this week.

The bills, sponsored by Rep. Dawn Creekmore, D-East End, received final approval Thursday and await Gov. Mike Huckabee’s signature.

One bill would allow the state to use Global Positioning System devices to track sex offenders. Under the measure, doctors or anyone with the authority to prescribe medicine would be able to consult crime databases to determine if the patient is a sex offender before prescribing a drug for erectile dysfunction.

The legislation also requires sex offenders to re-register with police every six months and to update their personal information. The most violent sex offenders would be tracked by GPS devices for at least 10 years.

Creekmore has introduced two measures modeled after a Florida law passed last year and named to memorialize the death of a 9-year-old girl by a registered sex offender.

“I was very excited upon passage of both bills, but now I am ecstatic,” Creekmore said Thursday afternoon.

Since the bills’ passage, Creekmore said she’s heard of two cases in which people confessed to sex crimes to avoid the stricter penalties.

Commonly referred to as “Jessica’s law,” the Florida law imposes tougher penalties on child molesters and requires many of those released from prison to wear satellite tracking devices for the rest of their lives.

Creekmore’s bill to toughen sex offender penalties was approved by an 89-4 vote in the House on Wednesday and by 31-3 in the Senate on Thursday.

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The measure would create minimum penalties of 25 years to life in prison for sex offenders, and would apply in cases involving victims under the age of 14.

“A vote for this bill is a vote for all of the children of Arkansas who have either been raped or who may be raped,” Creekmore told House members. “It is also to say to those sex offenders who prefer our most precious asse t as their victims that there will be a consequence.”

Little Rock criminal defense lawyer Jeff Rosenzweig said Wednesday that both measures could likely be challenged as unconstitutional. The sentencing measure, Rosenzweig said, would take away the discretion courts and prosecutors have in sex offender cases.

“I think the state is buying itself a lot of problems with these bills,” Rosenzweig said.

Associated Press Writer Jill Zeman contributed to this story.