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The increasing secrecy by Iowa law enforcement and their lawyers about identifying people by name raises important questions underlying public confidence in the critical work of first-responders.

The question deals with whether police can or should refuse to identify persons involved in incidents and crimes. Despite Iowa’s history of openness about crimes and accidents, with increasing frequency public officials refuse to provide names of people who end up in these events, whether as victims or perpetrators.

A few examples illustrate this issue:

Des Moines police officers encountered a tense standoff early the morning after Christmas in 2022. The incident involved a 16-year-old boy with a handgun. The events unfolded inside the apartment where his grandmother lived. His mother and stepfather lived a couple of doors away.

In the five minutes after officers arrived, having been summoned by the stepfather, officers pleaded 70 times with the teen to put down the gun, according to a report from the Iowa attorney general’s office. The standoff ended when the youth raised the gun toward officers, resulting in them firing 14 shots that struck him in the head and torso.

The attorney general’s report identified the dead boy only by his initials, T.J.

Des Moines city attorneys ordered police not to make public their body camera video from the standoff or the teen’s name, despite the willingness of officials to do so. The lawyers claimed releasing the name and video would violate Iowa’s juvenile justice law because the teen had not been charged with any crime in connection with the standoff. Of course, authorities seldom prosecute the dead.

Keep this supposed legal analysis in mind and think back to the mass shootings at Perry High School. Within hours of the tragedy, law officers released the name of Dylan Butler, 17, the student who fatally shot one student and injured four other students and three school employees before he took his own life.

Like many Iowans, my thoughts have been rather chaotic since the horrible news from Perry High School last week.

The events were so sad and senseless. A 17-year-old student was dead, having shot himself. An 11-year-old sixth-grader, known for his big smile and cheerful outlook, was dead from three gunshot wounds. Seven other students and school employees, including the high school principal, were wounded by the teenager.

Americans are numb to the number and frequency of school shootings and other mass killings. Our leaders appear to be paralyzed. Yes, they express their sadness and concern, but thoughts and prayers are not enough.

Also inadequate was the message Donald Trump had for Iowans when he expressed his concern about the Perry tragedy. “It’s just horrible,” he said. “But we have to get over it. We have to move forward.”

I really should not be surprised by some comments that represent what passes for civic dialogue in Iowa these days.

The latest example leaves me shaking my head, not just at the events themselves but at the reactions. Mrs. Gentry, my history and government teacher in high school, would be dismayed by intelligent people misunderstanding one of the foundations upon which the United States was established — that foundation being the desire of people for intellectual freedom.

How I wish I could still drop by the Gentry home, park myself on Mrs. G’s couch and dive into an in-depth conversation with her and Mr. G about the events that transpired in recent days at the Iowa Capitol. Some people’s mistaken notion of what religious freedom involves has brought the spotlight to Iowa from as far away as Great Britain’s BBC.

The trigger for all of this attention was the decision by the Satanic Temple of Iowa to temporarily erect a small altar with candles and a caped, ram’s-head figure representing the pagan idol Baphomet. The display was off the Capitol rotunda next to the grand staircase, not far from where another group placed the traditional Christian nativity scene.

City leaders in Davenport have forgotten that city government there belongs to the people. It does not belong to the folks who were elected to city offices.

This reminder is necessary because a troubling series of events that is unlike any I have seen in five decades of monitoring the goings-on in local governments across Iowa.

The shenanigans should have State Auditor Rob Sand knocking on the doors at City Hall. He should be asking questions on behalf of the tax-paying people of Davenport — because city leaders there are not answering questions from the public or journalists.

An investigation by the taxpayers’ watchdog also would serve notice to officials elsewhere in Iowa to not try using Davenport’s secrecy strategy in their communities to keep the public in the dark about embarrassing or controversial decisions government makes.

A few months ago, I bumped into a former aide to Gov. Robert Ray. As we reminisced about the governor, our conversation turned to his nearly daily meetings with journalists.

The aide said yes, those press conferences provided reporters with access to the governor and his comments on issues the state was handling and hearing about from Iowans.

But Ray believed the daily press gatherings had another important benefit, too: Ray could do his job more effectively by listening to the journalists’ questions, the aide said.

State government is a sprawling operation. With reporters combing government agencies for news and bringing their questions to the governor, it meant Ray would be better informed about what was going on in the government he was responsible for managing. Sometimes, those questions dealt with concerns the governor was unaware of — matters that could be dealt with quickly before a small issue could grow into a bigger problem.

Today, Iowa is at the point where one issue has been allowed to fester into a significant problem — and this should alarm Iowans with elderly relatives or who expect to be elderly someday themselves. That issue is the quality of care provided by some of Iowa’s 414 nursing homes and care centers.

This is my favorite time of the year. There is no late-night bombardment from infernal fireworks like there is with the Fourth of July. There is not the pressure of Christmas to choose just the right gift.

With Thanksgiving, it is about enjoying the company of family and friends — and deciding whether to scoop up pumpkin pie, apple or banana cream. With Thanksgiving, it is a time to reflect on our blessings and to think about others who are not as fortunate.

Back during my years as a newspaper editor, I was always eager for stories that raised our spirits and warmed our hearts. Those stories were a needed antidote to the heartache that seemed too often be in the news.

The word for today is optics — but not the kind where your eye doctor is an expert.

Instead of eyeglasses, I am thinking about the kind of optics that result when the perception of some person’s or some institution’s values are contradicted by the reality of the actions they take.

Here's an example. This involves poor optics.

Librarians across Iowa have been put on the defensive by parents and grandparents who criticize some of the thousands of books that fill a community library or school library. This criticism has been especially sharp toward books intended for teenage readers that contain content with homosexual or transsexual themes or that include descriptions of sexual encounters that some people believe are too explicit for these readers.

Librarians have stepped forward to explain that it is not proper for people to force the removal of challenged books, thereby taking away other people’s ability to choose what they want to read or what they want their children to read. Library administrators have informed parents how they can limit the books their children have access to in the library or in the classroom.

Veterans Day is around the corner. For John and Bob, the day will be for remembering the men and women who serve in the United States military — and for two service members, in particular.

For John, it will be his son, Robert, a Marine lieutenant who will forever be 29 years old. For Bob, it will be his father, Karl, forever the face on treasured family photographs of a handsome 26-year-old Army captain.

John and Bob are patriots through and through. They are not big-government fanatics. They have something else in common, too. They both believe the American people should never forget the ultimate sacrifice paid by members of the U.S. military, and that is a reason they are disappointed with a decision made by the government they love.

They believe the federal government has made a terrible, insensitive mistake by walking away from a pledge to the families of our war dead after World War II — to make it convenient for Gold Star families to remember their 234,000 loved ones who are interred or commemorated in 26 military cemeteries and memorials in more than a dozen foreign countries.